


descant descending

by macha



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-17
Updated: 2011-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 06:25:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macha/pseuds/macha





	1. 0: inception

0.1.1 INCEPTION/ FORM/ WORD

Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness sending

 _descend_ : to pass  
in discussion from what is logically prior or more comprehensive

 _thread_ : to arrange  
a thread, yarn, or lead-in piece in working position for use in a machine

 _cante fable_ : interwoven  
song and story, a preliterate bardic formal structure and the oldest known  
form of the folktale

0.1.2 INCEPTION/ FORM/ WORLD

so this is what we know:  
the vampire's fucked, alright? royally, eternally, screwed. used to exude  
an elegant menace, style to the nth, and a positively demonic joie de vivre.  
preternaturally sensitive to the chinks in armor, killer repartee: straight  
to the jugular, talk you to death. animal magnetism, sleek and swift, poetry  
in motion, death and glory. always about the blood. gone, all gone.

maybe. chipped and chained,  
eunuched, he shoulda thrown in the towel, except that boy never knew when  
to fold his hand. instead he goes for the smoking blanket option, fighting  
his kind and making bad bargains with white hats. well, where's the logic?  
but logic has never appealed: born to be a bank clerk, like any poet, but  
this ain't William, and that world's gone forever. still the best street  
fighter of any century he happens to be in, but wasted all wasted protecting  
a Slayer's family and friends, fixated on keeping his promises, treated  
like dirt. gone, all gone.

maybe. so, do we blame the  
Slayer? always, that thing for Slayers, he bit off more than he could chew  
this time, no kidding. couldn't kill her, couldn't save her. changed for  
her, and she didn't notice, didn't believe the evidence of all her senses  
(gone for broke, this Slayer). touched her, and found himself on the other  
side of the galaxy. settled for what he could get, and then couldn't get  
it. and then didn't want it. neutered, broken, buggered, pissed off, and  
under the weight of a whole helluva lot of misconceptions, went off to  
Africa, questing. gone, all gone.

maybe. succeeded, at any  
rate, by pain everlasting, judging from his eyes. gave up the fight and  
joined the choir eternal. worst thing, he got so quiet: where was the spark,  
the snark? not looking to atone, thank god, been round that bend before,  
but all the fighting going on in his brain this time, pulled down by the  
weight of voices, relying on costume, resorting to cutouts. crucified,  
there goes the sizzle. gone, all gone.

maybe. what's left just isn't  
even enough to make connections. stuck in the basement, umbilical arising  
from the earth devouring, it rises up to bite him on the ass. stuck in  
the closet, ready to quit? so then, world wants him gone, no wonder, nothing  
left much but his canines. and some flickering desire to somehow help,  
how pitiful is that? loves the Slayer, still can't touch her. nothing bloody  
left of him but a spark that burns. gone, all gone.

maybe. gave up and went to  
dwell in nether regions, someone else's war fought on what's left of his  
body. why not? disgrace to demons everywhere. all that teeming life eating  
away his unlife. hardly a crumb from the Slayer. all suffering and no sufferance.  
no rest for the wicked. gone, all gone.

maybe. and out of that, an  
old story. back to the beginning. you need a special slip with a stamp.  
but ain't we in a sodding engine? all aboard.

0.1.3 INCEPTION/ FORM/ MAKER

before form, function. before  
function, feeling.

feeling. longing and loss  
are hers, caught in the teeth of time that will not end, in space she never  
dared to let him enter. blood on her hands, and that's the only part he  
could not see. inside those clear blue eyes she wanted to fall into, horror  
and shame still live, but those are spent for himself. even the dark in  
her he saw was light. longing and loss are his, caught in the teeth of  
time that will not end, in space he never dared to let her enter.

function. this is a dance  
of levels, and of levelers, and those who stand and wait. these are the  
gates she means on his behalf to shatter. this is the day the doors on  
the stairway down can all be entered. in this ritual she gives over everything  
she has and is reborn. when she has paid her price and finally stands naked,  
she will be clothed in power. this is a story older than the world. this  
is the game that she was born to play.

form. memory has a shape.  
it leaves bones in the air, transparent. it sings time. she balancing on  
the axis of her pre-Adamic double helix with his matching DNA in ribbons  
wrapped around her, spooning her safe, protected by the map of his body,  
sleeping in dreams they share, revolving slowly in the empty sky. to love.  
to wake. to give. to live.

inside.

still.

turning.

0.2.1 INCEPTION/ DIVINATION/ PROPHECY

The god of the underworld  
and the Slayer, both dealers of death in their proper realms, will play  
the game of life, but only one will understand it. And the power they have  
to win will not reside in the majesty of their offices, but rather in what  
they value enough to risk.

0.2.2 INCEPTION/ DIVINATION/ TARA

It's time now. Everyone's  
waiting. This is the day. See this door here? That's the one you need to  
go through. And don't forget to take the key. Okay, wake up.

0.2.3 INCEPTION/ DIVINATION/ FATES

Before the World, the Word.

But even before the Word,  
the First Slayer began in silence, and her power rose with her out of Darkness  
to exist only in the moment of Death.

And it came to pass that  
as one died, the next was called, throughout recorded time.

But when the earth beneath  
wakes hungry, then one will come, and die, and two shall rise, one light,  
one dark, and the dark one shall covet light, and the light one shall fall  
into darkness.

The Slayer that was will  
drown, and the Slayer that is will jump, and the Slayer that shall be will  
storm the gates of the underworld.

And then in the final days  
either the Slayer will shatter or she will shatter the walls between dimensions,  
depending on whom she chooses to stand with her, and in any event this  
will be known in the demon worlds as the end of days.

0.3.1 INCEPTION/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF EVIL

floating downstream i was,  
in that dream, flowers laid out all around me, down to an island of glass,  
my perfect knight gone all away, and nobody left to sing my songs with.  
all my birds still died, just like in coal mines. they promised me they'd  
kill her, the black gate opened, and she was ready, dancing with death,  
i wanted to eat her up myself. but Angelus sent me the wrong Slayer, otherwise  
i might have saved both wicked boys. thought they were quarrelling over  
me, all that time, but all that scent of Slayer on them both should have  
warned me. Angelus fled the field, he did. she was stronger than him, and  
that's what nearly killed her. imagine. i haven't eaten a gypsy since.

my dark prince, i still can't  
see the moment that he fell to her, but it was early. i was still weak,  
from Prague. mothers told grim fairy tales about us to their children at  
bedtime. he had no walls against me, none, until he lost himself and all  
i could find was just the shadow of that boy who played with me. he didn't  
leave his shell under any of my thimbles.

would she ever have looked  
into my eyes that night in the library? Daddy kept her busy elsewhere,  
well away from me. from the first day we came she kept herself well hid.  
i would have liked to linger over that one, turned the dolls around to  
watch while i put her away carefully in separate packages, into those boxes  
that the Judge arrived in.

he promised her he'd kill  
me, i remember, i didn't like that game at all. i see him turning slowly  
in the sky, a catherine wheel, dying again and again and again just so  
he needn't come back to me. and even so, such exultation in him that he  
had escaped me, me that had come to save him. no family feeling at all,  
he was so ungrateful. i looked into his entrails steaming and saw nothing  
but change, his heart gone all away beyond to a world in which we died,  
all, gone, lost to that same small girl who never once strayed within reach  
of my eyes. my sight never had such borders till she came. we were both  
blinded by her, me and my boy. everything burned away inside her light.

i don't like poets anymore.  
i thought he'd always love our songs. i thought we'd walk through worlds  
together. even Miss Edith had to look away. poor lost boy, what could i  
do but cast him out to die again? if only he had killed her for me at the  
start. what did he see in her, that i couldn't see when i counted stars?

i turned the dolls around.  
i'm tired of dancing.

0.3.2 INCEPTION/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF BALANCE

Who was that on the phone?

Oh, Buffy called.

She called? Well, now I know it must be the end of the world.... So, what?

What what?

What did she say, for heaven's  
sake, are you gonna get like this forever, like after we're dead and gone,  
every time her name comes up?

Probably. There's an armageddon coming.

Well, big whoop, like as  
if we couldn't figure that one out, given the signs. So what's the plan?  
Are we joining forces?

Later, maybe. Right now she's  
got a quest to make first, and she wants some help at this end.

Now she picks for a quest?  
She hasn't had any time between deaths and resurrections to schedule that  
for a quiet moment instead? Okay, okay, we'll rally, so what's she questing  
after anyways?

It's Spike.

Another evil scheme?

No. She's off to....

Don't mumble, spit it out.  
Her name is Buffy. You can say it, if you really work at it.

She's going down beneath to get him back....

Down there? For him? You gotta be kidding.

No.... She never did that for me.

So Dad, tell me about Spike.

Not in this lifetime.

Cordy, were you aware that  
Spike and Buffy had formed a relationship? Or that he had managed to gain  
a soul?

Buffy doesn't exactly rush to tell me about her lovelife, Wes.

Well, a bit of advance intel  
might have been nice. It sure blows all the predictions about the vampire  
with a soul out of the water, doesn't it? I'll have to go back through  
them all and start from scratch. Where did he go to get it?

Africa.

Why didn't you ever do that, Dad?

Out of the mouths of babes.  
Let's get started, boys and girls. We have some serious workings to do.

We really need to have the lobby floor retiled after this.

Hey, still an apocalypse  
coming, folks? Not a good investment, I'm thinking, until after the day.

0.3.3 INCEPTION/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF GOOD

Have you got the key?

In my heart forever.

How will you find him in the dark?

I can always find him.

Come back to us, please.

I will. Thank you. Going now. Where's the door?

At the end of the meadow.

Huh. Will you look at that?

0.4.1 INCEPTION/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL

It's not as though I haven't  
had plenty of time to think about it since.... I don't remember a single  
moment with her that I didn't endanger all that innocence. I don't even  
remember ever being much help. Always she was alone, and I never offered  
comfort. Because I was unclean beside her. Because I heard Angelus whispering  
stage directions inside me. Spike, you know, developed that thing for Slayers.  
Angelus, I discovered, had also a thing for Slayers. Thing was, he wanted  
to kill her every time I touched her. There's no cure for that one, either.  
It took everything I had just to walk away.

0.4.2 INCEPTION/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE

What is the right thing in  
the world she lives in? I saw such light in her, but all dark inside me,  
and cold, so cold, my heart, the world. She was too warm, too bright, I  
should have done what I always did before, and killed her, brought her  
to darkness with me. Slayer's meant to be a creature of darkness: that's  
why I loved the dance. Family, friends, falling away: meant to kill her,  
I did mean it, set out to do it, I am still a monster, kept my edge, gloried  
in slayer blood, snake in the garden, dancing the dark dance, and I could  
feel it, that she wanted to dance too, give up, give in, give me what I  
deserved, another trophy. And suddenly instead, when the moment came, when  
her eyes opened, her body tight against me, when the moment came, my opening,  
she wanted it, I looked into her eyes and I fell forward into her, opened,  
so far. And there she was, Slayer and girl together clothed in light, claiming  
my power and hers as one, silent, and damaged, but even her pain all mythic,  
live current, so raw. And I was lost, she had become too real to kill.  
We met inside outside, the first real moment in more than a century of  
unlife, and that's the moment when I died again, claiming myself instead  
as other than what I could be. In her wide eyes I saw my heart that could  
not beat, my soul lost to the demon, climbing up, and climbing out, I lost  
myself, drowning in her, burned up in sunlight.

Why did I try to climb beyond  
my nature into light? True, a man's reach should exceed his grasp, but  
then I am not a man. Maybe that's why all that I did went wrong. The closer  
I came, the farther away she got. It is over, isn't it? We fight, we die.  
Wishing doesn't change that, so I guess we don't get to die of love, should  
have known that from the first time round. No matter what I did, for her,  
I couldn't separate the monster from the man, couldn't be what she needed.  
Thought for a bit embracing the dark might have been what she wanted. Thought  
for a long time I could help her balance the load, learn to use both the  
light and darkness inside her - happens I know a bit about that - but that  
wasn't right either. And I couldn't bring her out of the darkness where  
she was lost and into her own light, because, hey, creature of darkness  
here, bit of a light allergy. Made a good demon, but a very bad man. Girl  
deserved more. Trying doesn't count. I don't forget the sins that really  
count: it's why still every night she will not let me save her.

0.4.3 INCEPTION/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY

Bad dream, bad dream. Crypt  
door. Another lifetime. Breathe. He wasn't even real. He had no soul then.  
I wasn't real either, not even sure about the soul part. Didn't take any  
Slayer powers to speak of to destroy him, though, did it? In love Buffy's  
the Slayer, oh yeah. No wonder they all leave me. Two years since he set  
down his shotgun by the verandah steps. Angel told me he killed his family  
and I put down my crossbow. I'm not that girl any more, no kidding. Angel  
was cursed with his, Spike went and sought his out.

Okay, Slayer, time to open  
the door and get the damn vampire back, there's a plan. Hope he's not staked,  
or mad, or broken, while I lay here dreaming. I know he's dead but he's  
never not been dead, all the time I've known him. Gotta collect him so  
he can help me fight this year's apocalypse because?...: on my balance  
sheet, he goes down as an big whopping asset. Right, note to self, Anya,  
bad influence. Shower, change. Willow, Giles. White gloves, pocket watch.  
Time's a-wasting. Men on the chessboard, ten feet tall. Eat me, drink  
me. Down the rabbit hatch. No fruit for Buffy. Bag the assets. Mom always  
liked him, gotta count for something, and anyway I just know she'd be thrilled  
to find me nesting.

0.5.1 INCEPTION/ ECHO/ WITNESS ARIAS

Okay, who's the hero then?

Maybe there isn't a hero.

Hey, there's always a hero.

It's the twenty-first century, we don't even go for heroes.

Wait, there's an antihero.

No, there isn't. God, where have you been, stuck in the fourth season?

Well, Buffy's, like, lost her aura for me these days. I think she went dark.

She'll never go dark.

Anyway, we don't like her. She's not all perky, like she used to be.

And jokes, where are the jokes?

No black and white, they're changing canon, it's all for the demons now.

The demons? Jeez, try out the Scoobies, you wanna see demons.

It's just no fun any more, they hardly even kill stuff.

Well, Gilmore Girls is on.

No wait, there might be Anya this week.

0.5.2 INCEPTION/ ECHO/ MEMORY

> April is the cruellest month, breeding  
> Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing  
> Memory and desire, stirring  
> Dull roots with spring rain.
> 
> (T.S. Eliot, "The Burial of the Dead", from _The Wasteland_ )

0.5.3 INCEPTION/ ECHO/ INVOCATION

Adonai, Helomi, Pine. Adonai, Helomi, Pine.  
The gods do command thee from thy majesty.  
O Mappa Laman, Adonai, Helomi.  
Come forward, blessed one.  
Know your calling.  
Come forward, blessed one.

Osiris, keeper of the gate, master of all fate, hear us.  
Before time, and after, before knowing and nothing.  
Accept our offering.  
Know our prayer.  
Osiris!  
Here stands the warrior of the people.  
Let her cross over.  
Let her cross over.

Accept our humble gratitude for your offering.  
As in life you have given death, so in death you have given life.  
Go forward, blessed one.  
Know your calling.  
Now once more in death, you will give life.  
May you find wings to the kingdom.

Go forward, blessed one.  
Know your calling.

0.6.1 INCEPTION/ PLAINSONG/ BARD'S TALE

Then the Slayer appeared  
before the god Osiris.

And he said, "Begone! This is not the world of the  
living. You have no jurisdiction here."

"I come in peace", she said, "on  
business of my own, that serves both life and death, both light and darkness."

"How can that be?" he said. "What is your purpose?"

"I seek the vampire  
Spike, who was once called William."

"But surely it is the business of  
Slayers to send the undead into the Underworld, and not to recover them  
from it?"

"It's true, that is the more usual order. But - what can I say?  
\- I'm just not the usual Slayer. And as for the vampire he's also one of  
a kind. This vampire is mine to call, and I mean to claim him, since I  
have need of him in the work I have to do."

"You mean to tell me *he*  
has a calling?"

"He does, and it is by my side he is meant to fight."

"Been  
a long time since I laughed out loud", he told her.

"All part of the special  
edition Slayer package, and my free gift to you", she answered, all perky.

"The dead and the undead alike are mine", he said, "but as you have made  
me laugh once, at least, I will play you for him, if you like."

A senet  
board appeared in the air between them.

"What stakes?", said the Slayer.

"Winner take all."

"Done."

0.6.2 INCEPTION/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC

her beauty in that meadow stopped the heart.  
she waded in, alone, and took the light with her.  
that moment when she moved beyond us all  
and left us  
breathless  
and bereft  
the Queen of Earth and Air  
absent  
descending

0.6.3 INCEPTION/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD

The Slayer set out for the underworld  
And she left behind her love  
And she strode through the meadow and into the stream  
And she left the world above

And she took all the radiance she bore  
With her to the world below  
And she took her heart that she kept so dark  
And the seed she had yet to sow

And she met the god Osiris there  
Who dwells at the end of night  
And she crossed his river of blood, and dared  
To come bearing her own small light

The Slayer confounded her destiny  
Demanding a dead man rise  
And thereby amused the god of the dead  
And he offered her a prize

Her shadow sat down with the god of the dead  
And they played the Game of Life  
And the Slayer entered the world below  
And the God thought of taking a wife

She laughed, but she would not eat or drink  
And she moved on every throw  
So the Slayer travelled among the dead  
In the dark of the Great Below


	2. 1: weapons

1.1.1 WEAPONS/ FORM/ WORD  


Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness sending  
know her now she comes descending

 _descend_ : to swoop or pounce down (as in a sudden attack)

 _thread_ : to pass a thread through the eye of a needle

1.1.2 WEAPONS/ FORM/ WORLD

it was always different for  
her, with him, right from the first encounter. "do we really need weapons  
for this?" she said to him, and his body spoke to her in his answer. lesson  
the first. the bells gave warning then of the near approach of the Wild  
Hunt, chasse Arlequin. he who woke from a dream to journey to the land  
of death. so here they are, on opposite sides of that one last river.

the trouble always was, both  
of them loved the dance too much to stop. both built for hunting, evenly  
matched, exhilarated every time they upped the stakes. beautiful and wild  
and, within the dance, free. no quarter. grace. and so they circled, endlessly  
wary, around one another. allies under a temporary truce. she gave him  
mercy, he gave her help. he gave his heart, she took his flesh. all that  
life, pouring out of his undead shell, kept her alive in a bad year.  
he gave her pain, she gave it back. he erased himself, and started over.  
he gave up all his natural weapons, and he knelt before her judgment.

she gave him trust, on a battlefield.  
they are bound by blood, two eternal champions.  
he will never give up, she will never give in.  
they have mated.

1.1.3 WEAPONS/ FORM/ MAKER

spiralling down, through  
the dark matter of empty space. whirlpools in which she drowns again, over  
and over. nightmares in which she is bitten, and drinks, and wakes to find  
herself undone, unmade, undead, unloved, abandoned.

spiralling up, he wakes to  
all the memories of death he dealt, of harm. and thinks, for a moment,  
to find her, keep her safe somehow from harm, from him. and he remembers  
her, so bright it hurts his eyes, lost in the dark.

1.2.1 WEAPONS/ DIVINATION/PROPHECY

> the challenge that causes  
> a man to measure  
> himself against standards  
> more than human  
> to gamble life for  
> honor or both for love.
> 
> (found poem, from: definition of aventure,  
> P.M. Matarasso, _The Quest of the Holy Grail_ )

1.2.2 WEAPONS/DIVINATION/ TARA

Do you mind if I walk beside you awhile?

I'm afraid to look behind me.

Don't worry. We'll make a garden of it someday. On your way back you'll see.

Sure I'll be coming back then? Nobody else is.

It will be okay.

How do you know?

Let's see, I know he'll wait for you to come forever. And I know you won't give up until you  
find him.  
Et voila!

I really miss you.

I'm always here. Earth and air, you know, both you and me. We're still connected.

1.2.3 WEAPONS/ DIVINATION/ FATES

> a man in Caithness saw in a vision  
> supernatural women weaving the  
> battle on a loom of slaughter, where  
> men's heads were the weights, and  
> men's entrails the warp and woof.
> 
> (Nora Chadwick, _The Celts_ )

1.3.1 WEAPONS/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF EVIL

Irina, hey, Lilah here. Listen,  
things in the office are going all to hell and I just can't get away. Can  
I ask a favor? All the lines are down, and I need to send a message to  
the Senior Partners, make sure I'm covered on this. Yeah, in the contract  
it's dealt with, I think, Clause 39b? Okay, just say the Slayer's entered  
the playing field. They'll know what I mean.

1.3.2 WEAPONS/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF BALANCE

Okay, so the question is,  
do we want to intervene? Girl's got a history of confounding prophecy,  
as we have cause to know. And a temper worthy of the Irish, I mean: my  
ribcage for a hat. So small, and there she is still standing after so long.  
The Angel intervention, in retrospect, probably a mistake. And now the  
whole prophecy racket is far from a sure bet, two vampires with soul, ya  
gotta admit nobody could have predicted that. Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking  
that too, best to leave it alone, see how the thing works out. Maybe no  
cause for alarm. One thing I know, that girl doesn't take too well to interventions.

1.3.3 WEAPONS/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF GOOD

Dawn? Are you there? I can see the first stairwell ahead.

I wish I could have gone  
to guard your back. I'm ready. But what if the monks made me for some other  
purpose?

This is what you were made  
for, Dawn. To open all the doors between dimensions.

But I'm way darker than you inside, you know.

Not sure that's true. But  
even if: wasn't it some vampire that told you once you didn't have to be  
good to be okay? Use what you have.

Buffy? He was so good to  
me, when you were gone, he really was. I'm just not strong like you.

Sisters, remember? Summers  
blood. It's not our gifts, it's mom who taught us to be strong.

Promise you're coming back.

If I can, I'll come. Tara says we're going to plant gardens.

Tara's there? Really? I'm so glad. Bring me back something good?

Working on it. Tell Willow it's time now to start to sing.

1.4.1 WEAPONS/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL

No weapons, no friends, no  
hope. Of course I remember. Whatever the 'I' entails. Angelus and I, between  
the two of us, we separated the Slayer from her strongest weapons, the  
purity of her soul and the radiance of her light. Gifts she gave to me  
freely, but after Angelus came and she skewered me to close the portal  
she hid them away and never took them out again. Now, every time she dies,  
I know who to blame.

1.4.2 WEAPONS/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE

Once I lived caught in the  
moment of death myself, the death of Slayers, of William, of everyone I  
ever ate, and called that glory. Master of the Wild Hunt. Red Man with  
Half a Cart. Dru was the Mistress of reading entrails, but the making of  
death answered the call of chaos in me, and I went willingly to all its  
pleasures. Waded in red blood to the knee, did William the Rhymer. It was  
her made ashes of it, every pose, every sodding construct I put up against  
her, all crashing down against the reality of what she was in herself.  
The weight of her regard. Her best weapon. "Do we really need weapons for  
this?" she said to me the first time I fought her. She didn't need to be  
armored against me, she was herself the weapon that brought me down.

1.4.3 WEAPONS/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY

Weapons chest, hope chest,  
aren't they just what every girl born ever wanted? I have wielded the hammer  
of a god, and plundered signage for a stake. Why do I have to stake them  
in the heart that doesn't beat? This is not a sensible occupation. Every  
so often, I wish the world would make sense. Every so often, though, gotta  
admit, I wish there was blood in the fridge and a vampire in my bed.

Maybe it's an attention span  
thing: apocalypse on the way, right, perfect time to go looking for poor  
lost vampires who have gone astray. I know it's stupid to feel guilty,  
but he did all of it for me. I hardly noticed how he changed, or how much  
I hurt him, but he kept me alive all that desperate year, at great cost  
to himself. He wanted so little in return, and I gave nothing back. Not  
a smile, not a crumb, not a word. I took what I needed, as if he was nothing.  
I hated him for everything he did for me. I felt unclean and I took it  
out on him. I think in the end he would have preferred it if I'd killed  
him. Or let Xander kill him.

Guess I kinda got sex and  
death tangled up together. Basis of western civilization, or so I hear.  
The ordinary world doesn't have much to say about souls these days. In  
some ways, I find him scarier with than without. I wonder what that says  
about me. But I have to accept that Mr Formerly Bad is a work in progress.  
And so am I. Good times, bad times. I am not the stuff of dreams. And I'm  
not sure what he is any more. He could rightly say the same about me. But  
there is.... I trust him to.... I believe in....There is something there.  
Worth going for. A good man inside him. Someone who sees me as I am, and  
still cares. He wouldn't choose to leave me. I won't just leave him there,  
I can't.

It's too late to brandish  
weapons in his direction. He'll only kneel down and offer himself and break  
my heart. I think it was always too late. Besides, do we really need weapons  
for this?

1.5.1 WEAPONS/ ECHO/ WITNESS  
ARIAS

But the thing with Angel, wasn't that supposed to be forever?

So romantic. Couldn't you just die?

Yeah, they both died. He  
couldn't save her because, no breath. She couldn't save him because, world  
in peril.

Also, not too romantic when  
the curse kicked in. Getting a happy acquired a whole new meaning. Entering  
a nunnery acquired a new appeal.

How could Angel and Angelus  
be so different? Spike's soul didn't make him not-Spike. And even as a  
demon he had long since stopped wanting to kill Buffy.

Angelus certainly meant to  
kill her. Unsouled Spike, on the other hand, teamed up with her to stop  
him. No fun for Buffy to have to send her boyfriend to hell to close the  
portal.

Not much fun for Jenny, either,  
or Giles. So how come there's a horrific Angelus inside a good Angel souled,  
while Spike is just kinda Spike, not so much bad or good but hovering in  
the middle, co-existing with William and determined not to hurt Buffy.

But Angel is noble. Spike's not noble.

What, you're kidding me,  
right? Angel was cursed with his soul: you think Angelus was just too bashful  
to admit he really wanted one of his own? Give it up.

1.5.2 WEAPONS/ ECHO/ MEMORY

> Inanna the Goddess of Heaven and Earth, of War and Fertility,  
> descended during the harvest rite to the Underworld.  
> From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below.  
> My lady abandoned heaven and earth to descend to the underworld.  
> She abandoned her office to descend to the underworld.
> 
> (from _The Cycle of Inanna_ )

1.5.3 WEAPONS/ ECHO/ INVOCATION

Elements of dark and light, hear me.  
The Chosen One is walking now through the Underworlds.  
She walks unarmoured through the nether regions.  
She means no harm to any: let her pass through.  
Emptyhanded she storms the  
gates of the underworld as once she stormed the gates of heaven, and those  
gates fell before her.  
She is herself a weapon against the darkness.  
In the endless battle between light and darkness, she is eternal champion.  
She has conquered all the darkness in herself, but she knows your pain.  
She has fought the dark in the upper worlds, and given peace to the damned.  
She has lost so much, she has little left to lose.  
Though she has lost so much, she continues to hold the center.  
Though she has lost so much, still she continues.  
In the dead ground, new life is kindled in her wake.  
Earth, and Air, inhabitants  
of the outer darkness, the blessed one walks among you.  
She is an innocent in this, she has come only to gather.  
Grant her the comfort of your absolution.  
Give her your blessing now to carry out her mission.  
Tied to her fortune hangs the fate of this world.

1.6.1 WEAPONS/ PLAINSONG/  
BARD'S TALE

And the Slayer came to the  
keeper of the first gate.

"Let me through", she said.

"Where is your token?"

"I come unprepared. What would you have from me?"

"Every weapon you own."

"Done."

And the gate opened, and the Slayer walked through empty-handed,  
her burden lighter.

And descended the stairs.

1.6.2 WEAPONS/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC  


she piles them all there, by the stairs.  
stakes, holy water, crosses, and a sword  
strapped to her back. tools of the trade.  
have you seen her yet in battle  
spinning, a lifeforce dealing  
death, propelled by joy  
a small wild miracle  
whirling through space?  
she is a poem of balance and grace  
as beautiful as running water, caught in light  
except she is never caught, quicksilver  
unknowable, immortal, in her still center  
and still in daylight just  
one small blonde girl  
holding the line against the dark  
with family and friends  
and love to guide her  
against all odds  
she still illuminates  
her sunlit city

1.6.3 WEAPONS/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD

What will you give me, Joan of Arc,  
To take this calling back today?  
Where do you stand, when you stand with god  
To take confession or to slay?

I did not seek this calling out  
But I am Chosen all the same.  
I would be free of it at last  
But I am caught inside this game.

How will you keep this whole world safe  
If you put down your weapons here?  
I am the sum of more than this  
And these are not the things I fear.

I have been called and I will stand  
Against the dark, until the day  
When all my weapons turn to dust  
Because there are no more to slay.

I will go unarmed if I must  
But in the night, the final test  
Is how to save the world alone  
One final time, before I rest.

I would give everything I am  
To give this calling back today.  
God does not speak to me at all.  
I went to heaven, but could not stay.

And I confess I wish that cup  
had passed from me now long ago.  
But I'll still put that crossbow down  
And challenge heaven to snow.


	3. 2: walls

2.1.1 WALLS/ FORM/ WORD  


Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness  
sending  
know her now she comes descending  
know him waiting life unending

 _descend_ : to proceed  
in a sequence from more remote to nearer or more recent

 _thread_ : to make one's  
way, usually cautiously, through a hazardous situation

2.1.2 WALLS/ FORM/ WORLD

funny that it's the vampire  
who brims over with feeling, whether he's dealing in brutal honesty, tender  
excess, or now eternal pain. souled or unsouled, he is the very poster  
child of risk, revealing everything, his highwire act intact without a  
net, there isn't even any seam between the emotions of the demon and the  
man. the point of view differs when he shifts but he never holds anything  
back, there is a continuity in him that will not be denied.

the Slayer on the other hand  
keeps bits of her self squirreled away in locked compartments, in storage  
lockers that she never enters, layers of herself she does not recognize  
or will not acknowledge, turning to dust on cold metal shelving. she has  
turned inward, sharing nothing, swallowing the bile of living, the responsibility  
of caring too much, the nightmare of duty without end, the slow drip of  
endless slaughter, she is still so nearly too raw to touch. in her bleak  
heart they have all already left her, as they have all conspired to bring  
her back.

only the vampire pushes past  
those boundaries she sets, he just won't quit trying to reach her, hold  
her, save her every night, when all she can feel is the hard edges, slamming  
against the wall of the house coming down around them. she doesn't see  
him at all inside that violent world to which she was returned. those reinforced  
walls she built specifically to keep him out slammed into place the same  
night all those other walls came down. so she used his body and denied  
him access to her soul: left him, soulless, with nothing to go on but sensation.  
he felt her urgency and mistook it for depth of feeling. how could he fathom  
otherwise, inhuman?

so the question is, how to  
let go, what note will shatter all these useless boundaries that the Slayer,  
fearing herself inhuman, hides behind?

2.1.3 WALLS/ FORM/ MAKER

> Among later Greek writers  
> there is a persistent tradition of a maze or labyrinth dance in Crete,  
> in which the dancers pursued a winding course, suggestive of the devious  
> passage of a maze.... Dances of the maze type are common to many early  
> peoples in various parts of the world.
> 
> (Lillian B. Lawler, _The Dance  
>  in Ancient Greece_)

2.2.1 WALLS/ DIVINATION/ PROPHECY

The Slayer of the End of  
Days shall forge alliances between humans and demons and mystical forces,  
in contradiction to all the accepted laws of nature. She will build the  
walls between the worlds, and by the strength of her will when the moment  
comes she will bring them down. She will inspire from all who stand  
with her both loyalty and love, till death and beyond, protecting those  
she trusts with the power of love even as she herself patrols the distant  
ramparts of infinity.

2.2.2 WALLS/ DIVINATION/ TARA

Tara?

I'm still here. I wouldn't leave you to walk alone in the dark.

I don't know what I am any more. Am I a monster?

Oh. No. Never. I see such light around you, and your heart is pure.

Then why do I feel so wrong inside?

You were broken, a little.  
The urn broke too soon. And Willow should never have called on Osiris.  
But you're mending. Trouble is, there's a collision of destinies going  
on around you, and that's enough to confuse anybody.

You mean a whole other 'one girl in all the world' kind of a thing?

Yep. Think of yourself as becoming.

Not looking dark, though? Inside?

Nope. Same old bright Buffy, I promise.

I really miss you, Tara.

I won't go away.

2.2.3 WALLS/ DIVINATION/ FATES  


there is no seeing past her  
present on this canvas.

time and space spun, she  
yet remains a shadow.

we weave her destiny all  
night, but day unravels.

no one can cut the thread of

life to make her ending.  


we see no further

into her than this:  


she is the one who will choose,

and the world will follow.

2.3.1 WALLS/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF EVIL

So read the scroll. We've been a long time tracking it down.

> Before there was light, in  
> the darkness, where chaos breathed on the face of the waters, the lines  
> were drawn. In the shape of a double spiral, life and life were made in  
> the eddies of whirlpools before time began, before the puny race of man.  
> Two separate races were shaped to fight and breed their bloodlines back  
> into one another, to populate the earth under cover of darkness, and to  
> share their power. But it came to pass that one race set itself above the  
> other, inventing Order, and held the Peace they wanted by waging war. And  
> as one died, another was called to maintain the Law and kill the Other.  
> And so over time the Slayers claimed dominion over that other race, who  
> denied their right to do it, and the race of men were made from the ribs  
> of Slayer descendents. And the Slayers passed for human as civilizations  
> rose and fell, but they stood apart, because they were Older. And from  
> the ribs of the Other was made the race of demons to populate the netherworlds,  
> and to bedevil the race of men. But as the Slayer Elder line continued,  
> so did the Elder line of the Order of Aurelius. For both Elder Races were  
> drawn to one another, as they were always meant to mate, and fight, and  
> die together, until the end of the world.

Well, of course that's why  
Angelus was meant to be sitting at the Master's right hand, come the day,  
you must have known that? You just can't send a poet out to do this kind  
of work, even if he does have a better track record with Slayers. What  
on earth is becoming of this family? Two vampires with souls, two aborted  
attempts at mating. Gypsy curses. Human weakness. And nobody caring enough  
to hold the family together. Darla, *Darla* of all the unholy, staking  
herself for love of a child? And nobody even has a theory yet to cover  
that one, so we can't say whether we ought to welcome Connor into the family  
or not. Nobody seems to want to stay dead, slayers or vampires, nobody  
takes pride in this family anymore, there's hardly anyone left to do the  
rituals, and Dru's beginning to look like the most sensible one of the  
lot. At least she got out of town, and then stayed gone. We need a strategy  
meeting. Bodies are gonna dust. If the Firm gets ahead of us on this, they  
might just decide to take us off the board. They should never have let  
humans into their strategy sessions, they never live long enough to see  
the big picture.

2.3.2 WALLS/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF BALANCE

This emergency meeting has  
been called to discuss a matter of grave import, the final disposition  
of the current Slayer.

I'm sorry, sir, I'm just  
wondering which Slayer you're referencing here?

The one in office. The one  
who holds the line is still safely under lock and key. Now, if I may continue?  
Thank you. If we had a Watcher in place, we could close the situation down  
quietly at this point without attracting any undue interest. As it is,  
we are left with a choice of unpleasant options. One, we can tell her what  
we know, let her make the choice herself.

Too risky, in my professional  
opinion. She's never been malleable, her reactions are unpredictable, and  
she doesn't trust the Council.

Still, those very qualities  
could translate into assets for our cause. She has a habit of confounding  
prophecy, after all, as well as all our recommendations. Age and experience  
are on her side now.

Judging from the confidential  
reports I have been receiving lately, it is already too late for that kind  
of intervention, now that there are pheromones involved. It's an abomination,  
and it has to be stopped. According to our analysts, some sort of bond  
may have been formed, against all the laws of nature.

What you really mean is,  
against the laws of the Council.

Lydia, please. This is not  
a formal debate, and there are not two sides to every question. Two, we  
can send in a wetworks team to take her out, without prejudice.

Does the situation really  
warrant such a drastic move?

Unquestionably. There is  
far more at stake than one lone Slayer. And Slayers are always expendable,  
by definition.

But that would be murder.

Nonsense, this is the work  
we have to do. We are sworn to protect this world.

The real question is whether  
the team might be up to the job. This Slayer hasn't lived so far beyond  
her time without perfecting her version of animal cunning. If our people  
take their shot, and lose, things could spiral out of control.

Ladies and gentlemen, please.  
I think we all know what has to be done. This organization has devoted  
millennia to one simple agenda: ensuring that the Vampire Slayer comes  
together with her prey for one purpose and one purpose only. To slay one  
another in battle. And never to mate. It is our duty to fulfill this mandate.  
We were born into this charge. Now that the time is at hand, we must stand  
against the forces of darkness. I'll dispatch our best team, forthwith.

I understand that there are  
a number of innocent parties out there in the field, still guarding her  
back. Her little helpers we interviewed two years back, presumably. What  
about them?

This is a war. We call that  
collateral damage. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Meeting adjourned.

2.3.3 WALLS/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF GOOD

I thought she was never afraid,  
Giles. And I was afraid all the time, that people would find me out, that  
I just couldn't control.... Well, we know that didn't turn out well. But  
her, I knew there were small things, like the hospital fear. And she hated  
being drowned. But I didn't know....

She feared having to kill the people she loved.

Yes. I guess I just couldn't imagine, then, what that would be like for her.

She became afraid to love  
them, in case she had to kill them later. After Angelus opened the portal  
for Acathla. Once, but never again. And she couldn't face, later, the prospect  
of having to kill her sister.

And then this year, me. And  
Anya. And Spike. All-too-real possibilities. I could understand it in my  
head, I could even accept her right of judgment, the luxuries of not-saying  
she didn't have. But in my heart I still couldn't understand why it made  
her so remote.

2.4.1 WALLS/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL

He hates Angelus. Still,  
you know, he was the only one to beat him. No matter what the old man did  
to him, he never lost. Naked, buggered, bartered, brutalized, broken, you  
couldn't ever get him to give up unless he thought by doing so he was protecting  
Dru. Otherwise he was as senselessly intransigent as he was defenseless.  
Wonder the old man didn't beg for mercy himself, when he looked into those  
blue eyes and saw the boy's judgment. It wasn't logical. There was no possible  
gain to his version of defiance. But, truth to tell, I did admire that  
in him. He never gave an inch, that fragile boy.

And he hates me. Pity we  
may have burned and beat out of him, over the years, but his contempt lives  
in his eyes. I know why. I never did as well, against Angelus. I was afraid  
of him, and I gave over both times I lost the soul. I keep him chained  
within, walled up, and rigidly contained, but the boy sees us both here  
waiting. He has the long memory of a born poet. He sees no virtue in all  
my protestations. Nothing to choose between the demon and the man. His  
body knows, intimately, indelibly, we are the same. And he will never surrender.

I have been cursed. Empty,  
the demon entered. Against my will, as punishment, I got the soul. There  
is a monster in me; I am the monster in me. I struggle every day to make  
myself a better monster. But he is still a man. We could have killed him,  
but we could not make him other than he was. Rage and necessity have made  
a killer of that poet, but he is still alive, intact, inside. He set out  
deliberately to restore that soul; it was a choice he made. If every day  
he struggles with himself to become better than the day before, I should  
respect him for it. He is never afraid to risk everything he is and has  
against one throw, no matter what he loses.

Instead I sit here thinking  
to myself not only that I should have staked him, but that maybe even now  
I can find a way. He simply knows too much about the nature of this beast.  
If Buffy learned from him even a little of what he knows.... I sit here  
thinking that my unlife is worth more than his in the balance: good deeds,  
much expected, people who care for and depend on me, a son to raise. What  
has Spike ever done to make him worth more than me? I am the Master of  
Los Angeles. I fight today as a champion on the side of light. But even  
if I stake him, he has still won again as he has always won against us  
both. He does not bother to set out defenses against our certain predations.  
No matter what we do to him, we both know he will still be the better man.

2.4.2 WALLS/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE

Why did I ever let her in?  
I meant to kill her, killed two already, sort of my raison d'etre, innit?  
Mutual non-aggression pacts with Slayers, what the hell was I thinking?,  
should have unleashed it. Best advice I ever gave that wanker, fists and  
fangs and bugger the art of it. Fighting with her was art, all balance  
and flow, yin and yang, and once it was started it always came to seem  
like a sodding shame to stop. No end to that dance. Eternal. And she was  
beautiful, insides and outside, such a wonder when she finally looked at  
me, I felt all chosen too. A bleeding revelation. Warm hands, cold heart,  
I thought, she felt, so raw, I couldn't bring myself to stay outside her.  
Dru was right, I should have, could have, not yet, stayed intact myself.  
Floating in the air all around me, too right, blood boiling inside the  
cold inside. On my merry way; wanting the best for. Neutered twice, Spike  
the Pathetic, empathetic. Why didn't Angel warn me, lame as always, was  
he drawn to her himself like that, a moth to flame? Maybe I misjudged him,  
just a little. To kill this girl you've got to love her, fair advice, but  
that's my fatal flaw. I just didn't pay attention to the fine print, look  
where it's got me. Eternal rest. No peace. Supposed to get easier, isn't  
it? Still all alone in the dark, still wishing that I could cut it with  
her. Cut her with it. Cut it out.

Before she touched me, we  
were almost... friends. Comrades. If I'd known she would shut me out after,  
like nothing, like less than dust, I might have had the strength to push  
her away. But at the time, it felt like revelation. I was so sure I had  
reached something in her, broken through all the barriers she raised against  
feeling to protect herself. Instead she used that contact to break, brutally,  
the connection. Was it something in me, some evil arising, that made a  
trainwreck out of my best intentions? I meant well, there's an epitaph.  
I meant to be the kind of man who would never hurt her. And forgot, as  
she never did, that I wasn't a man. And then, going soulful, frightened  
her more: she saw Angel in my eyes and had to kill him again.

I couldn't die for her, being  
dead already, but I gave all I had, my heart that did not beat, my soul  
she could not bear to look at, my body she could no longer bear to touch.  
So much pain in her I would have liked to take away. So much pain in me  
she couldn't bear to look. And so, impasse. In the middle of darkness,  
the walls kept shifting. Still, she could always find me when she came  
looking. So I did dare to hope someday she might let me give her comfort.

2.4.3 WALLS/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY

If this is a labyrinth, shouldn't I be holding string?

2.5.1 WALLS/ ECHO/ WITNESS ARIAS

I know this one! Dawn is the key, born to unlock the door.

Which door?

All those doors on the stairway  
down, I'm thinking. Buffy comes down those stairs past all those frames  
to where Spike waits the night she's resurrected from the dead.

Right. Dawn complains that Buffy won't let her in.

Okay, so the walls in the house keep being breached. What else?

It's strong in the chthonic  
imagery: Buffy gone to ground in the trenches. The earth reclaims her body  
under ground when she's dead. She has to claw her way out of the coffin  
and back up to the world when she is resurrected. In _Grave_ , Willow BlackEyedGirl  
tells Buffy she took her from the earth, and now the earth wants her back,  
and then the elementals come out of the walls below ground to reclaim Buffy  
and Dawn.

And metaphorically, Buffy  
so guarded, of course, like she's been way back to Riley leaving, when  
her mom died, when she told Giles in _Intervention_ she didn't think it sounded  
right when she told him she loved him.

But the spirit guide told her she was full of love. And she jumped for Dawn.

Joyce is in the wall in _Restless_. And Xander blames the wall in _The Body_.

Xander's the heart of the  
Scoobies. He blames Buffy's walls for a lot of their problems: it's the  
start of their huge argument in _Selfless_.

Because she holds everything  
inside these days. CrazySpike in _Lessons_ tells her the source of the problem  
is in the wall. And two eps later, he's still trying on his own behalf  
to "wall up the bad parts, put your heart back in where it fell out."

She certainly did a fine  
job shutting him right out in Season 6, poor bugger.

She shut everyone out.

Loss of affect. It's a thing.

2.5.2 WALLS/ ECHO/ MEMORY

> Ah, love, let us be true  
> To one another! for the world, which seems  
> To lie before us like a land of dreams,  
> So various, so beautiful, so new,  
> Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,  
> Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;  
> And we are here as on a darkling plain  
> Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,  
> Where ignorant armies clash by night.
> 
> (Matthew Arnold, _Dover Beach_ )

2.5.3 WALLS/ ECHO/ INVOCATION

Dark Ones, The Slayer walks tonight in your kingdom.  
Stand not against her, and erect no barricades.  
Dissolve the walls around her and stand sentinel.  
Reach out to the light she brings you as she passes and let her continue,

for she is not the enemy of Night and has never feared the dark.

2.6.1 WALLS/ PLAINSONG/ BARD'S TALE

And the Slayer came to the  
keeper of the second gate.

"Let me through", she said.

"Where is your token?"

"I come unprepared. What would you have from me?"

"All the walls around  
your heart."

"Done."

And the gate opened, and the Slayer walked through  
empty-handed, her burden lighter.

And descended the stairs.

2.6.2 WALLS/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC

seven  
seconds  
solace  
with the  
crypt door  
still  
between them  
in the  
dark

seven  
minutes  
savage  
in the  
bathroom  
when the  
demon  
killed the  
trust  
between them

seven  
hours  
staring  
at the  
revelation  
in her  
naked  
eyes that  
night

a hundred  
forty  
seven  
days  
without  
her in the  
wilderness  
was  
quite  
enough

seven  
years of  
service  
for the  
Queen of  
Earth and  
Heaven  
gladly  
undertaken

seven  
human  
lifetimes  
given  
freely  
for the  
chance to  
make her  
whole  
again

2.6.3 WALLS/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD

i live inside a tower of glass  
that lives on inside me  
the Slayer slays, the maiden pays  
and neither one is free

i built it up to hold the pain  
that anchored me to living  
but duty calls, and in these halls  
i can't give in to giving

if i could live inside the walls  
of hell i might be free  
but demonkind have paid no mind  
to all my mystery

if all the walls inside the halls  
of hell could fall to me  
i would go get him back before  
i met with destiny

the dances we have dallied in  
have cost too much to bear  
the one we are still caught inside  
has moved beyond despair

i move through valleys of the damned  
the dead reach out to me  
but i have life to give because  
he gave it back to me


	4. 3: fear

3.1.1 FEAR/ FORM/ WORD  


Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness  
sending  
know her now she comes descending  
know him waiting life unending  
dancing waters into mending

 _descend_ : to worsen or sink in estimation

 _thread_ : something continuous or drawn out  


3.1.2 FEAR/ FORM/ WORLD

at the end of the World,  
the Slayer is thinking of shelter. she gathers in those she loves: one  
carpenter, one jumped-up hedge witch, one key of pure green energy, one  
souled vampire, one ex-watcher. she gathers in those she needs: one ex-demon,  
one useless twit of a boy, any number of Potentials dropped on her doorstep  
like so many foundlings. like her mother before her, she builds her fortress  
inside home. her views on love may not include hot chocolate, but she keeps  
them fed and warm and bedded down. her views on the nurture of fledglings,  
endearingly, do lean heavily to training-with-weapons. her views on the  
need for vampires are contested, but she means to win that argument. nevertheless  
she gathers, and she shelters them, and for the Slayer this is how she  
loves.

where is her own shelter  
within this storm? she has been Chosen, yielding obligation. she has been  
targeted, and so for her there is no safety. she feels them pulling at  
her, children, wanting her attention and respect and her affection while  
each dream she has, each waking moment, focusses on strategies for battle.

but the Slayer has been reborn  
this time. she has rebuilt, painfully, all her connections to the world.  
she is no longer a sacrifice or pawn. she is not simply a Bringer of Death.  
this time she casts herself as Protector, not merely as Destroyer. this  
Slayer, at last, is whole.  


3.1.3 FEAR/ FORM/ MAKER

> ... a game played by the  
> shepherds of western Asia before the days of Homer. It was played with  
> pebbles in a square divided by certain lines. In the centre of the square  
> was a small figure of a sheepfold, in which the pebbles were kept....Very  
> gradually its form changed somewhat, and the sheepfold became a mound,  
> or barrier, or dividing line, and the game assumed a military aspect; while  
> the idea of shelter or inviolability that had attached to the sheepfold  
> became an attribute of one of the pieces used in play, a characteristic  
> of the king in chess today.
> 
> (Catherine Perry Hargrave, _A History of Playing Cards_ )

3.2.1 FEAR/ DIVINATION/ PROPHECY

She will sacrifice all she  
has, and damage herself. She will sacrifice all she is, and disappear.  
But in the end she will rise from the fire before the final battle strong  
and whole, a swift sharp blade that will not bend or break.

3.2.2 FEAR/ DIVINATION/ TARA

They're so close. Will it be like this the whole way down?

Yes. But I can hear Willow  
singing invocation at them. If they will listen, she can hold that line.

I have dreams of this, you  
know. Since always. They are clutching at me, pulling, entreating. So not  
a treat. They won't stay down.

Are they yours?

Yes. Mine. All the ones I've slain. No peace for them, no peace for Buffy.

The gift of peace you make when you Slay is meant for the living world.

Yes. But which world, then, is really mine?

3.2.3 FEAR/ DIVINATION/ FATES
    
    
    Step back.  
       Go home.  
          She falls.  
    He rises.  
       Earth and Air, with Water, born of Fire.  
          It makes constellations.  
    It sings Union.  
       It owns space.  
          It eclipses time.  
    He falls.  
       She rises.  
          Step back.  
       Go home, go home.  
    No gauge of scissors will cut into this.

3.3.1 FEAR/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF EVIL

Well, has a memo come up  
from below yet on the matter? You think they're not gonna move on it at  
all? Jeez, you'd think Linwood was still in charge. Well, I have everything  
in place. Anything goes wrong, you'll find me holding another staff meeting.  
I have a report that white hats are already chanting. Let's get this show  
on the wide paved road the minute clearance comes through.

So what's our position on  
this gambit exactly? Doesn't take a timeshifter - and hey, thanks for the  
lift - to know this throws the broad general picture right out of whack.  
And there seems to be a real rash of incorporeals at the moment in all  
dimensions, never let it be said that I'm not in style. I do have this  
one big personal question as to why you've called me in, given that the  
Holtz gambit didn't exactly work out for either of us, and I seem to recall  
that betrayal was our favored mode during our time together. Care to comment  
on that?

That Holtz thing actually worked  
out to our complete satisfaction, although of course your mileage may differ.  
Angel has plenty to brood about, believe me, and so does the kid, which  
leaves them in the best of cold storage waiting for the end. But actually,  
I was hoping for your help with another matter. The jar, by the way, is  
safe from you: don't give it a moment's thought. Now, let's confer.

3.3.2 FEAR/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF BALANCE

Okay, we don't have enough  
parameters yet to even run the stats. As a general rule, the Slayer's not  
part of our crew. It's only in Special Projects we sometimes use her. And  
the vampire, we didn't even have our eye on him, the other one sure, but  
this one went right under our radar, never a major player come apocalypse  
time, killed a few Slayers but as you know they are a renewable resource,  
the military doesn't report to us so we didn't know about the chip, we  
didn't know about loving the Slayer, standing in for the Slayer, getting  
the soul (Lloyd is way behind on his paperwork), and Skip was only keeping  
an eye on the other souled vamp. So here's the precis: the Slayer's gone  
down and her crew is already chanting, Angel's team has retrieved the second  
Slayer and is ready to roll, the Firm is marshalling forces but waiting  
on a White Room paper, none or all of the prophecies may apply, this particular  
Slayer's always a wild card, and we still don't have enough input to produce  
stats. Recommend wait and see, heavy on the see.

3.3.3 FEAR/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF GOOD

I never really understood until I was in there with her tonight.

How do you mean?

How all alone she really  
is inside. How does she ever go on? When I think that she laughs, and cries,  
and cares, and lets us help a bit, while all the time inside she is so  
far away. The distances she crosses when she lets us share a little of  
herself: it's the bravest thing she ever does, Giles, every time she lets  
us in.

3.4.1 FEAR/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL

To kill this girl, you've  
got to love her: Angelus' plan in a nutshell. Always in there waiting for  
his one good day. See, with Cordy, it's different. She'd never trust me  
that far, and she'd stake me in a, well not quite heartbeat I guess, the  
moment he emerged. Buffy though, ran me through once to save the world,  
but when she gave her trust she never really took it back. She really did  
mean everything for keeps.

Maybe that's love, you know,  
maybe I just don't understand it even yet. All I really know is, because  
that was the way she was I couldn't ever trust her to do what was necessary.  
And I guess it never occurred to me, the enormity involved in counting  
on her to do the execution. Maybe it's a Slayer thing: because she was  
never afraid of battle, I never factored in the obstacles her heart presented.  
Okay, maybe that's another sign that I don't quite get love.

I'm really a whole lot better  
at making them fear me than love me. I suppose maybe that would be Liam's  
point of view: like Angelus, he took his pleasure wherever he pleased and  
took no prisoners. Darla had such contempt for love. Drusilla both feared  
and loved me, but of course I had already made her mad. William, a rebel  
to the end, refused to give me the satisfaction of either one, no matter  
how much he paid.

I still want Wesley's respect  
and love although I tried to kill him, and still expect him to kill Angelus  
without a qualm. Did I love Connor as a baby, or was that pride of ownership?  
Do I love him now? How can I tell? I do try to protect the family I've  
made here. Usually. When I think of it. When I'm not pissed about something,  
or preoccupied. Does that mean I love them? And yet Darla, her soul only  
borrowed, loved Connor enough to die for him. And Drusilla and William,  
soulless and damned, did love one another for a long time.

3.4.2 FEAR/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE

She could always have killed  
me, you know. I wouldn't have minded, really, if that had been her... judgment.  
Her calling, her call. But she wouldn't kill me, wouldn't leave me alone,  
wouldn't let me in, wouldn't trust me. Too right, couldn't trust me unsouled.  
Couldn't help, and wouldn't hinder. And it was only much later that I thought  
of Angel, and how far exactly he could be trusted, with or without soul,  
in her own experience. Not that I was, by a long shot, ever the same as  
him, damned or undamned. But there was evil in me, souled or not. I was  
still Dead. And still Unworthy. William - was a bad man. And had done things,  
to her, that... she was still afraid. And she was still... right.

As a performance, it needed  
a bit of tweaking, that's all. A bit less Danse Macabre, a bit more Waltz,  
maybe. Dancing with Slayers, not like it ever lost its charm. Though recently,  
she tended to be exhausting. Waiting for her to suss out where she stored  
her heart.... No dancing, though, with shades, here in this place. Why  
didn't she kill me, so many times when she ought to have done it? Did I  
ever, really, intend to kill her, or was it always that other dance that  
led me here? I don't know, any more, for sure what the demon wanted.

What did she see in me, that  
made me worth more than dust for so long? She trusted me. With her family,  
with my promises, even to let me feed on flesh when I was only flesh to  
her. I broke every promise I ever made to her. But I so much wanted to  
deserve that trust. Doesn't wanting count as currency? Didn't think so.  
All that lush life that spilled out of her, all the time, and suddenly  
there I was, caught in the headlights. Transfixed. Transfigured.

Better for her this way,  
I reckon. What could I give her, really? Death and the Maiden. Just maybe  
she'll do better with another style of dance. Would have liked to guard  
her back, though, in the hard days to come. And played 'usu daemon' maybe  
to her Saint Joan. Would have liked to stay and see her happy, no matter  
what (or who) it took. Right, too brilliant, the irony of Spike revealed  
as just another poet brought down by love. As to who killed whom in the  
end, verdict's still out on that one.

3.4.3 FEAR/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY

I think it's the way they  
reach out that makes it so hard. The living and the dead. They won't let  
go. They all want in. There's no peace anywhere. I felt safe with my mom,  
who loved me and didn't need me to give her anything. And sometimes when  
I look at Dawn, I feel... home. I feel loved sometimes, when Giles is here,  
when Xander and Willow and even Anya choose to stand with me. But the only  
moments I've ever felt safe since mom died were with Spike. And how weird  
is that?

3.5.1 FEAR/ ECHO/ WITNESS  
ARIAS

She shuts them out.

She behaves so badly.

She's afraid.

She's the Slayer. She's not supposed to be afraid. What kind of a hero is that?

She's just a girl.

3.5.2 FEAR/ ECHO/ MEMORY

> What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  
> Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,  
> You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
> A Heap of broken images, where the sun beats,  
> And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,  
> And the dry stone no sound of water. Only  
> There is shadow under this red rock,  
> (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),  
> And I will show you something different from either  
> Your shadow at morning striding behind you  
> Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;  
> I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
> 
> (T.S. Eliot, "The Burial of the Dead", from _The Wasteland_ )

3.5.3 FEAR/ ECHO/ INVOCATION

Spirits of the Dead, grant passage to the Chosen One on this her journey.  
She stands before you open to the elements; unwalled, unarmed, unclaimed but still intact.  
She will give all she has, and is, for one, and will not count the cost.  
Her gift of death is rooted in love and life.  
Remember she has died twice herself, and given peace for so long to so many,  
and she understands your pain.  
Erect no barriers before her, and make no impediments.  
She stands before you naked, and sheds light.  
Stand witness to her story; lend her grace.

3.6.1 FEAR/ PLAINSONG/ BARD'S TALE

And the Slayer came to the  
keeper of the third gate.

"Let me through", she said.

"Where is your token?"

"I come unprepared. What would you have from me?"

"All of your fears."

"Done."

And the gate opened, and the Slayer walked through empty-handed,  
her burden lighter.

And descended the stairs.

3.6.2 FEAR/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC

down through the dark she runs  
spinning that spiral staircase  
no longer thinking of shadows  
or even time that will not wait  
but sure he calls her  
out of  
into  
safety

3.6.3 FEAR/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD

what will you give me now for love  
to keep me here, to wait?  
i make no promises of love  
but neither can i hate.

what will you give me now to die  
as twice you fell away?  
i do not want to leave you now  
that i agreed to stay.

what will you give me now to hold  
caught in this endless night?  
mercy is all i have to give  
for i am bound to light.

what will you give me to believe  
that you will yet be true?  
now it is time to gather in,  
and i have gathered you.


	5. 4: blood

Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness sending  
know her now she comes descending  
know him waiting life unending  
dancing waters into mending  
bleeding into oceans tending

 _descend_ : to pass by inheritance

 _thread_ : a filament, a group of filaments twisted together

4.1.2 BLOOD/ FORM/ WORLD

 _for all the blood that's shed on earth  
runs through the springs of that country_

for her, it's a geography, geometry of pain and loss and duty.

for him, a predator, it's hunt and dinner, nature over nurture.

but adding in the soul, it's also shame.

4.1.3 BLOOD/ FORM/ MAKER

blood has a rhythm. it thrusts,  
it burns, it sings life, it bleeds death. it is the poetry from which we  
make the dance. its blunt percussion drives us and marks us. it names us  
living. beyond reason. makes us warm. makes us hard. makes us fertile.  
makes us human. there is beauty in it. there is power. we live our lives  
inside blood music.

blood is a dance. it begins  
and ends with the heart. in battle and in love, it plays the urgency of  
life. it pounds out beats it sets. it dances out the pace it measures.  
it dances death, and life, and harvest.

blood takes us home. it circulates.  
it makes connections. we know it in ourselves, meeting, that sense of place,  
that rightness that is shared. it is too intimate to tell. it reclaims  
heart and heritage. it finds us, makes us, home.

4.2.1 BLOOD/ DIVINATION/ PROPHECY

The last Slayer will die,  
and die, and will rise again. And out of the darkness she will draw demons,  
Sons of Aurelius who will give up their nature to follow her into light,  
and mate with her there, and become champions of good, and fight in the  
final battle. For the dark warriors of that Order have been bred for her  
over the span of ten thousand years, and her blood calls always to theirs,  
and as it calls so must they come before her. Then according to their nature  
as Masters of Darkness they may turn her, and as Lords of Death they may  
kill her, and as Kings of Earth they may mate with her fruitfully in the  
harvest rites. And at the end of days the tanist king will abandon her,  
and his seed will be spilled elsewhere, and his wounds will never heal,  
and he will come to see her as a curse visited on him, and on his descendents.  
But the one who is promised will freely choose to stand beside her in battle  
and in life and death without hope of gain, and so he will gain as she  
chooses. And on what she chooses depends the fate of the world.

4.2.2 BLOOD/ DIVINATION/ TARA

Rivers of blood. Did I make  
all this with my hands, day after day, eight years of days, this flood?

Nah. Some of it maybe. Some  
of it's your own blood. Some is from Willow's sacrifice, the fawn. Even  
Spike's blood, I think, from Glory and... a lot of other stuff he did for  
you. Dawn's blood, from the tower, and that time she cut herself. Your  
mother's, when she died.

So much. I can't tell ford from flood.

Even that's underwater now. We'll have to wade across.

I hate the drowning part. Drowning in blood, particularly unappealing.

Yes. I remember.

Why is it all collected here like this? Is it a lesson? A warning?

It's a... map. Just a map. Like DNA markers, sort of.

Is Angel's blood in this river? I fed him once.

No. You didn't feed from him. He is not for you.

I didn't feed from Spike, and his is here.

It's not time yet, for that particular lesson.

Spike told me once the blood of a Slayer was an aphrodisiac. Isn't that weird?

No. It isn't. Buffy?

Sorry. Just thinking. Spike said it was always about the blood.

Sometimes, you know, he's really right.

4.2.3 BLOOD/ DIVINATION/ FATES

we spin  
we weave  
we cut  
but we can  
never pin that  
hairshirt on her  
and every morning  
that one's  
tapestry  
lies on the floor  
unmade again  
becoming  
remade in some  
celestial  
geometry  
some nul sum  
language we have  
never

known no  
values can be  
entered and we  
cannot  
spin her  
clothe her  
prick her  
cut her  
hang her  
drown her  
catch her  
save her  
spit her  
out

we think that it may be the  
combination unique markers of  
genetic structure  
wildcard encounters  
glory  
prophecy  
loss  
her army of  
the dead  
the dark  
the lost  
the loved  
the merely mortal

they all stand  
sentinel for her  
and claim a  
destiny that is  
beyond our  
cutting down

4.3.1 BLOOD/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF EVIL

all my secrets spilled spilled  
spilled like seed, but his seed in me always barren, and dead Angelus making  
mercy out of madness for me, till the Slayer came and i could smell the  
winds of change. she reeked of fertility and i saw his head come up, come  
round, my predatory boy, and he ran after her, led by his private parts  
and forever lost to me.

4.3.2 BLOOD/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF BALANCE

Our orders are not for you,  
but merely for the girl, Miss Summers. Two ex-Watchers, you at least should  
both understand you can still save the rest by standing down.

You have no authority here.  
We hold this ground in the name of the Slayer, and you shall not pass this  
point. You will never have her, and you only shame yourselves by coming.

We think the shame, frankly,  
is properly yours. Evidently the situation is worse than we ever could  
have imagined. Vampire Slayers that mate with vampires. Demons and witches  
and... children crusading on her behalf: it beggars description.

It certainly seems to beggar  
yours. Let us introduce ourselves. Me, I'm a carpenter. This is my ninth  
apocalypse, I think: at a certain point you tend to stop counting. Cordy  
here, Higher Power. Anya, vengeance demon. Willow, well, you won't be meeting  
Willow, she's otherwise engaged at the moment, and that's probably good  
news for you. The two Watchers you know. Angel, he's the Master of Los  
Angeles. Fred here's a theoretical physicist. Connor, we're not sure what  
he is just yet, chip off the old block at any rate. Dawn is The Key. Lorne's  
a talented guy from Pylea. Gunn's good with weapons. The girls are students:  
you want to watch out for them especially, they're taking notes. Oh, and  
this is Faith; I'm betting you already know Faith's occupation. I gotta  
tell you, she's a bit testy on the subject of Council wetware teams; you  
might want to back up a little, while you still have the chance.

Are you really all gathered  
here to protect that vampire the Slayer set out to recover?

Nope, we're all here to protect  
the Slayer's right to make any damn choice she pleases about what she needs  
to fight the next battle. See, we've been backing her up for a long time  
in this kind of venture, and we learned a bit along the way about how not  
to squander our capital. Because here we are, seven years later, check  
it out, still breathing - well, those of us who breathe, that is. We'd  
all of us die for her if we had to, but hey, living on after the battle's  
really worth a good chunk of bonus pay. So, she wants the vampire, here  
we are backing her up.

But you are, this is an alliance  
made in hell. How can you dare to claim you fight on the side of good?

We claim them as we play  
them, bud. And may I say, given your function, it's real amusing to hear  
you arguing you've got the high ground here. Even though some of us were  
raised by wolves. In fact, you might want to back up now all the way to  
England, or wherever that Council bunker is located. Don't tell us, let  
us guess: we should know within the hour anyway. Or, hey, don't back up,  
come forward if you'd rather, all this fancy talent we've got assembled  
here, kinda itching for a good workout, ya know? Bit of fieldwork? Think  
you can oblige us? I should warn you that we've got another apocalypse  
to fight after this side trip's done, so we're taking no prisoners today  
because, what with all the women gathered here, it's already way too hard  
to get into the bathroom to shave. On the other hand, over the years, we've  
all got a little sick of cleaning up afterwards. So I'm up for this one-time-only  
offer to let you all depart the playing field alive, you and the horseys  
you rode in on. Because you can't imagine the true source of our power,  
and dead men tell no tales to the old men you left cowering in that bunker.  
As long as you're going, you tell them for us that the next time we see  
you here, we'll take the fight to them. Well, gentlemen? Time.

I gotta say I never figured  
you for a speechmaker.

Hey, well, every minute I'm  
talking is a minute at least that I'm not fighting.

Growing up, much?

Possibly a tad. Anyway, it  
coulda been worse. There might have been a cheese guy to face down.

4.3.3 BLOOD/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF GOOD

I never could have understood  
it until I took a human life. How it changes you. It pulled me out of myself:  
I was free, and I was powerful. People were small, and they didn't matter.  
It was a taste of godhood. For a bit, I think I actually knew how it feels  
to be a vampire. But when I was... sane again, I thought of Buffy. Of what  
it was like to be Buffy. To hold so carefully to the distinction she always  
made between slaying and killing, that Faith didn't get. To try at all  
costs to hold on to her humanity, and her connections with the world.

And what did you learn?

The light inside her shines  
so brightly, it's blinding. I guess I always just stood too close to her  
before to see it. But the stress on her, it's inhuman, Giles. It's so unfair.  
Nobody who fights so long on the side of good, at such cost, should ever  
have to live with so much blood on their hands.

4.4.1 BLOOD/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL

I claimed her. I didn't want  
to, I meant to leave her free of me. She deserved more, and better. But  
I was dying and she uncovered the demon rose and he, and I, devoured her,  
almost unto death. And that was the end. When she woke up I saw myself  
in her eyes, and I walked away.

And in me, the demon still  
remembers exactly how she tasted, the blood of a Slayer, it burned, I burned  
inside her, blood in a holy chalice, eaten, ashes inside her as offering.  
Hungry. Unclean.

I took all that power as  
currency to the City of Angels and started over.

4.4.2 BLOOD/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE

Slayer blood, I know. And  
that was in it, all right, what drew me to her. Moth to a flame stuff,  
that. But more than that, and a very odd thing it was, Summers blood drew  
me. Which is only mortal, after all, and should have smelled of prey besides.  
But it never did, to me. Even though I was evil, and a monster. Dru was  
right. I was lost long before I was chipped. Stay the hell away from my  
daughter, Joyce said to me, first day in Sunnydale, axe all handy, and  
I gave it up for them all in that moment. Summers women. Always taking  
it on the chin, but never helpless. And bright, so bright. Shoulda worn shades.

4.4.3 BLOOD/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY

All those photographs in  
my room. Memory lies. I learned that, when Dawn came. Still I remember  
her and mom as home to me. I am terrible at making home. Still, I so want  
it to be there. It's been a long time, but I can still remember feeling  
safe inside. Now I have so many to keep from harm. But I'm trying.

Maybe the DNA remembers,  
all the important things I forget that matter. Dawn only has to brush against  
me on her way to the kitchen, and the memory of 'safe' leaves a clear impression  
I can live in, just for a moment. Spike made that bit of safety himself  
for Dawn, when I was gone. His gift, selfless. I never told him, all that  
meant to me.

Mom liked him a lot. She  
treated him like part of the family, always. Dawnie loves him; she'd never  
get so mad at him, otherwise. He's gotta be the most unsafe person I've  
ever known. But he understands home. He might even know how to make one.  
Maybe someday he could teach me how.

4.5.1 BLOOD/ ECHO/ WITNESS ARIAS

It's blood that connects  
them, all of them. The Primitive First Slayer alive in the moment of death,  
the predator vamps catching the scent of prey, smelling the Slayer, the  
line of Aurelius, the monks of the Key, the Summers family acknowledging  
their family ties. Blood and longing and loss. Hard and bright and violent.  
The truths about death, and the life beyond it, that only smell knows,  
that instinct sings to time.

It's blood that sings remorse,  
inside memory. That recommends carnage, beyond reason. That holds that  
thin line, that unskinned gulf, between justice and vengeance. It's blood,  
the blood they shed and how they live inside that red knowledge, that makes  
them what they are. Drusilla the Lost, orgiastic and innocent, covered  
with blood and still, forever, owed, more sinned against than sinning.  
Darla the Bitch cold and inventive, so full of every trick she ever earned  
or turned, is also Darla Warm who can't remember the name she started with  
but still owns every bit of the blood she spilled, Darla who dies for a  
child she could never have loved. Angelus, the scourge of Europe, well  
cursed, outside, inside, walled up, looking out. Angel who tries to do  
right while the whole world smells like food and Angelus waits. William  
who bends and bends but will not break, who remakes himself as Spike and  
remains intact, who kills and loves and lives with his own code of honour,  
and still recognizes home when he meets with it. Faith who fell into the  
lure of blood and power and leaned out too far into the art of the kill.  
Buffy who would not lean, who drew the hard distinctions and held on tight,  
two vampires got her hot but she never fell, and got for her reward no  
rest, no peace, no solace, only night and blood and damage.

Who will absolve them now?  
Only the Slayer gives peace, and can't get it. Only the Slayer has the  
right to choose, to stay her hand or slay, to judge and give, to take life  
and give mercy, for in her heart she is made so much the same, blood pounding  
in her too when the hunt is up, the scent draws her to darkness, separates  
out human from demon, she is a predator herself who dances death, and knows  
the glory of it. Only her ties of blood to her family and world tether  
her here on the human side of that great red divide which sends her out  
from those who love her every night into another universe of death and  
loss, hunting.

The photographs that fill  
her room all change, but Summers blood wins out, she smells blood everywhere  
but chooses to break bread instead, unwraps her sacred chalice, and makes  
once more of that blood communion, community, commitment, love, built with  
her small hands out of the dark call of her hard calling. This is her body,  
which is broken for you. This is her blood, which she sheds, forevermore,  
for you. For the innocent, and the lost, and the damned, for sinners who  
die in her hour of the wolf and for all who live now in the mercy of her  
grace. Forgive her her trespasses, and grant her absolution in this last  
passage, for all her small sins of omission, for all her great sins of  
commission, now and in the hour of her death, floating downstream in her  
life's blood, which is shed for you.

4.5.2 BLOOD/ ECHO/ MEMORY

> O they rade on, and farther on -  
> The steed gaed swifter than the wind -  
> Untill they reached a desert wide,  
> And living land was left behind.
> 
> "O see ye not that narrow road,  
> So thick beset with thorns and briers?  
> That is the path of righteousness,  
> Tho after it but few enquires.
> 
> "And see not ye that braid braid road,  
> That lies across that lily leven?  
> That is the path to wickedness,  
> Tho some call it the road to heaven.
> 
> O they rade on, and farther on,  
> And they waded thro rivers aboon the knee,  
> And they saw neither sun nor moon,  
> But they heard the roaring of the sea.
> 
> It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae stern light,  
> And they waded thro red blude to the knee;  
> For a' the blude that's shed on earth  
> Rins thro the springs of that countrie.
> 
> ("Thomas the Rhymer")

4.5.3 BLOOD/ ECHO/ INVOCATION

The Slayer has waded through blood, in the name of justice.  
Without her the world we live in would long since have been lost to darkness.  
To protect the innocent, she has dealt death, as she is called to do.  
She has given her blood  
and sacrificed herself to hold the line on the borders of light and darkness.  
Blood calls her now to a destiny beyond herself: let her cross over.  
She bleeds and dies for us, again, for you, for the mortal girl inside her.  
And although it is blood that calls to her now, it calls in the name of life.  
In the name of the life  
you remember, in the name of the blood you have spilled and spent, we ask  
you to let her pass.

4.6.1 BLOOD/ PLAINSONG/ BARD'S TALE

And the Slayer came to the  
keeper of the fourth gate.

"Let me through", she said.

"Where is your token?"

"I come unprepared. What would you have from me?"

"All the blood on your  
hands."

"Done."

And the gate opened, and the Slayer walked through empty-handed,  
her burden lighter.

And descended the stairs.

4.6.2 BLOOD/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC

no more the closing of portals with blood.  
throw them all open.

the time for sacrifice is done.  
you can't just buy off  
sunny girls from  
california with  
six pomegranate  
seeds and the  
prospect of  
six months winter.  
they're gonna want to shop around,  
flex the credit cards, model next years'  
shoes, check out the shades.  
you can't own them.  
sooner or later,  
they'll own you.

get used to it.  
it's a golden age,  
but it's not yours.

4.6.3 BLOOD/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD

opening into the start of  
the dance  
Harlequin waltzes with Slayers enhanced  
dark queens and melodies meant to entrance  
everything  
falling  
away

taking his opening, dancing with death  
Slayer falls into him, nothing is left  
one beating heart in the moment, bereft  
everything  
falling  
away

he has his weapon and she has to reach  
she learning lessons from he who must teach  
she gives him openings he cannot breach  
everything  
falling  
away

he gives up weapons and she gives up walls  
now they are whirling through time in these halls  
they have forgotten the price if she falls  
everything's  
falling  
away

time is an ocean that lends them this dance  
love neverending is trumping romance  
moving, from battle to mating,  
their stance  
everything  
falling  
away


	6. 5: hope

5.1.1 HOPE/ FORM/ WORD  


Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness  
sending  
know her now she comes descending  
know him waiting life unending  
dancing waters into mending  
bleeding into oceans tending  
sea from sky creation lending

 _descend_ : to pass from  
a higher place or level to a lower one

 _thread_ : a continuing  
element

5.1.2 HOPE/ FORM/ WORLD

> On a lovely summer day Eochaid  
> climbed onto the terrace of Terra to gaze over the plain. A handsome stranger  
> approached. He was Midir of Bri Leith. 'I know you not,' said the King.  
> 'But I know you', said the stranger. He invites the king to play [a hunt-game]  
> and brings out a silver board with golden men. They play for a stake, and  
> Eochaid wins. Next morning at sunrise the prize of fifty grey horses with  
> enameled reins is on the plain at Tara, and Midir is there again. "What  
> is promised is due', he says. Three times they play, and each time Eochaid  
> wins and exacts great prizes from Midir. The fourth time they play for  
> a stake to be named by the winner, and Midir wins the game. "What would  
> you have from me?' said Eochaid. "My arms around Etain and a kiss from  
> her,' said Midir. Eochaid was silent. 'Come a month from today, and that  
> shall be given you." A month from that day, Eochaid had assembled warriors  
> around him, and the doors were locked. But Midir appeared in the banqueting  
> hall. He was fair at all times, but on that night he was fairer. 'What  
> is promised is due', he said. Eochaid permits him to take his prize. Midir  
> embraces Etain and rises with her through the roof of the house. They fly  
> away in the form of two swans.
> 
> (Myles Dillon, _Early Irish  
>  Literature_)

5.1.3 HOPE/ FORM/ MAKER

so here we are in the land  
of hope and glory. sliding, maybe, into the home stretch. theatre of the  
open air, tuesday night at the end of the meadow, well will you look at  
that, a modern wonder. it's a circus, all built around that small blonde  
girl who once hoped to be real, then only to be free. there could be clowns,  
crossbows trained on that apple, costume, rains of fire, come one come  
all. at any moment there could still be lions. here death is smoke and  
mirrors, seldom shown as this endless field of death our Slayer dealt over  
time and could not seem to earn, but always a shadow play. the play's the  
thing and the tent goes up overnight and the ringmaster speaks the parable,  
the pilgrim's progress through Sunnydale to the Long Dark and the One Story.  
but it's a highwire act, all right, make no mistake, no net, a long way  
down to the ground, and all it needs on any night is just one rope way  
up at the top of the big tent to slip a little, and the girl will fall  
and we'll never see the likes of that again. supposed to get easier, isn't  
it? ach, bread and circuses to burn these days, it's only billed as entertainment  
but it is clear as clear that it is also art.

and there's only ever one  
question in this particular genre: what does it mean to be human? souled  
or unsouled, possessed by demons, hemmed in by nature and by duty and by  
inclination, good or evil, judged and cursed by gods and powers and luck  
to act out parts in plays that never were or always were, they sit and  
wait in wings looking for cues that have not played out yet, surrounded  
by their past and all the nuance of their endlessly echoing scenes already  
in the can, two hundred plus tuesday nights in and still rolling, gathering  
momentum, heading at speed towards their destinies, called, condemned,  
cold, confused, or questing, on the main stage, on the side stage, the  
cast recurring asks and answers over time and space only that one big question.  
human, demon, vampire, witch, they all stink of humanity, respond to reason  
or to love, and even the Judge can never cleanse them of it. and, being  
human, they do the only thing they can in a deadly world in the dark, they  
learn to care for one another.

in the early classical tradition,  
only the last line will reveal whether the play is comedy or tragedy. meanwhile  
the chorus bickers over grand design, and archetypes, chiarascuro tone  
poems, and the eschatology that waits, as the music builds and the dance  
changes and the parties of the first part all prepare for final bow. the  
music swells. let her cross over.

in the land of the dead,  
in the play, in the trenches, in the land of the unspoiled, it is much  
quieter. DNA tilts on its axis, there is no halftime show. the Slayer hopes  
for little. hope is a minefield.

he won't let himself think  
so, but he hopes she'll come for him; he really does.

5.2.1 HOPE/ DIVINATION/ PROPHECY

The Slayer Becoming deals  
death every day, and yet life will follow after.

5.2.2 HOPE/ DIVINATION/ TARA

You shouldn't be here with  
me. You aren't meant for this place.

I wanted to come.

But why? It's because of  
me that Glory hurt you. It's because of me you died.

It's only the things worth  
fighting for that are worth keeping.

There's nothing here but  
battle and disasters, ugly death all round.

That isn't what I see. How  
do you know, here, where to step, in the dark?

I don't know.

But you never falter.

Inside I falter plenty. I'm  
a born falterer.

Inside you there is light.  
I have always seen it there, so plain. It finds your path for you, even  
when you can't.

But everything around me  
dies. Good or bad, everyone dies and I'm still here alone making death  
with my hands with darkness all around me. Tara, I needed you so badly  
too, Willow wasn't the only one, and you left me, and that was my fault  
too.

You are a born faulterer,  
aren't you? Don't you know you have always been the Good one?

The Good one these days has  
more sins on her conscience than Faith, I'm betting. Spike used to call  
you the Good one, Glinda.

Spike, he just really needed  
a Fairy Godmother. He was always a sweetheart, even when he was so lost.  
He fought Glory, he looked after Dawn, he brought you back to life when  
we couldn't.

Am I wrong to go looking  
for him now? We are in the middle of armageddon, you know.

It's never wrong for you  
to trust your instincts. They got you this far, and you haven't even begun.

Can you help me find him?

You don't need my help to  
find him. You see him just as well as I do. I just thought I'd keep you  
company along the way.

5.2.3 HOPE/ DIVINATION/ FATES

It's empty? It can't be empty.

Even the loom has been dismantled,  
all those weights.

The ladies seem to have moved  
and left no forwarding address. Which is proving to be something of a trend.

That's a worry.

No kidding. All these agents  
of the Balance, they're just gone, decamping to some other galaxy altogether.

Or they've been taken out,  
like the Ra-Tet.

Could we be seeing the end  
of prophecy?

Our readings, everyone's  
readings, sure aren't proving predictive these days.

So what would that mean exactly,  
will Angel's fate then become evitable for real?

What if we're seeing the  
end of Balance? All these external forces, like the Powers that Be and  
the lesser deities that maintain that Balance, disappearing?

Does that mean the end of  
gray, just black and white, good and evil, to duke it out until the end  
of time? Everyone choose a side and that's that for all eternity?

Yeah, I'm up with that.

Well that's as may be, Charles,  
but most of us: pretty vulnerable to summary judgment in our nice glass  
houses, so maybe better if nobody comes along throwing stones.

Point.

Another possibility, what  
if it's the end of everything, the whole kit and caboodle?

How are we supposed to stop  
that one?

Just sayin'.

5.3.1 HOPE/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF EVIL

Remember that story about  
the Slayer in Atlantis?

Of course. The Water paradigm.  
She let him drink, and he drank from her, and the whole continent slid  
into the ocean and was lost forever.

Bit of a final solution,  
that one. Both lines barely survived. What about the Pompeii Hunter?

I know this one. Modelling  
fire. That one looked like a go for a bit. The mating was spectacularly  
successful, except it melted the earth's core, and everything turned dust  
and cinders. Including both the Hunter and the Slayer.

Not the most practical model.  
Waste of resources. So this is the best shot we've had in two millennia.

Nest's work. He spent five  
hundred years on the project, building into the Hunters a concept of family,  
tweaking the Slayer line here and there till he got the one he wanted.  
Killed her to force the split in the line which freed up all that fertility  
to serve the larger purpose.

Anointed the wrong one, though.

Nobody's perfect. He wasn't  
the only one to aim all those prophecies in the wrong direction. Candidate  
wasn't up to the job.

If the Slayer had gone Dark,  
it might have worked.

Been a different world today,  
though.

Closer to the one the Master  
intended with all that lovely detail work. He didn't figure in the peculiarity  
of the current Slayer, though. She slipped the bounds of all that Council  
programming, and took to making it up as she went along. It kept getting  
harder and harder to give odds on the possible results.

Never a good sign. Unstable  
genetic engineering. Still, the call is so strong, you can smell it now  
even a couple of dimensions over.

So what's our mission statement  
now?

Keep them both in the field.  
Let nature trump nurture.

5.3.2 HOPE/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF BALANCE

They didn't even get to breach  
the perimeters? You did manage, I sincerely hope, to obtain a complete  
report before they were retired?

Their story was they couldn't  
see much of the Witch, to get a clear shot at her. She stayed well back.

We had air cover. This is  
outrageous.

Theirs was better. They got  
ahead of us. We never expected them to have liberated the second Slayer  
already, and we never expected her to choose to stand with them.

And the Order? Is there movement  
there?

No troops on the ground,  
as far as we know. Lots of observers about. We haven't yet determined what  
position they're taking on the whole thing.

Didn't they back another  
candidate originally?

Yes.

Suggestions at this juncture?

Next shot we get at the target  
won't be till the Slayer in office comes back up the line.

You think she'll make it  
back? That's a fairy tale scenario.

Here we are living it. What  
kind of spin would you suggest?

Mine the stairwell.

They're gonna hold that meadow.

Come up at it from below  
and set lasers. It's the only way back up.

I fear it has come to that.  
Lydia, I'm leaving you in charge. If we don't make it back, blow the building.  
We can't let them take control of the Library.

But the knowledge lost to  
the world....

Never mind the books. We  
are the only worthwhile resource. A little knowledge can be a dangerous  
thing. I knew that girl was too damn colourful to rely on. Take a lesson  
from her example: she exceeded her instructions, repeatedly, and here we  
are today.

5.3.3 HOPE/ CHORUS/  
FORCES OF GOOD

Giles, do you think... is  
she still human yet, or has she become something else? We know all the  
terrible things she has seen, and done, and had done to her, and they live  
behind her eyes, but we still try to believe that we can love her, and  
know her, the way we always have. But sometimes it seems to all of us she  
has gone too far, into places we can't imagine or even dream, and I wonder  
if she has ever truly come back to us, or if we love a shadow, or a memory.

I think the Slayer in her  
is still becoming. And I have no idea what she will be when she is finished.  
Or what she sees in dreams she can't even describe anymore, besides death  
and battle. But I still have faith that the mortal girl remains inside,  
as intact in the midst of so much red ruin as it is possible to be, and  
that girl still needs us to love her, and fight beside her, and forgive  
her when she shares her pain, and when she can't. And I see that she keeps  
on trying to always remember she loves us.

She does keep on trying,  
I know she does. I can see it too. But sometimes it seems so painful for  
her to make that effort, and then I feel bad for adding to her troubles  
by not letting her go.

Love is pain, the spirit  
guide told her, and the Slayer forges strength from pain. And whatever  
she is becoming, a being of unimaginable power who seems to be no longer  
mortal, I know she counts the Slayer's value as less than that of the ordinary  
girl with family and friends, who loves and is loved. She would still shed  
that Slayer's skin in a heartbeat for a normal life, if she could. And  
because she insists on looking at her world that way, so unlike any other  
Slayer ever known, she is in some way now almost defiantly dreaming the  
girl, where once the girl dreamed the Slayer, if that makes any kind of  
sense. And sometimes when we meet, I can even see her in there rebuilding  
the girl piece by piece as her gift to us, that original girl that longs  
to love and be loved. And that's another unbearable thing to watch.

But it's a gift of love.

Yes indeed, it is that. So  
it seems to me that the best way to honor that gift is to respond to the  
girl. To reach out always for the human girl we love.

5.4.1 HOPE/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL

I was born in Ireland. 1727.  
My name was Liam. I hated my father. I liked to take whatever I wanted,  
and leave it spoiled behind me. Darla chose me to sire because she took  
my measure. Rising with power I made myself Angelus, who also liked to  
take what he wanted and leave it spoiled behind him. I killed my family,  
the whole village. I loved to play hunt-games. We cut a swath through Europe.  
I cultivated all the art of it. I had a great abiding talent for cruelty.  
I felt nothing. I sired Dru. I loved convents. I valued all my revels.

The Winter King follows his  
spectral hounds between Christmas and Twelfth Night. He is Celtic, wounded.  
His seed is barren. The Grail lives in his castle, but he is unclean; he  
cannot touch it, and it is not for him. He leads the chasse furieuse, the  
Wild Hunt. His game is gwyddbwyl in Welsh, a hunt-game. He stakes his wife  
on the fourth game with a Lord of Light, and loses. "He was fair at all  
times, but on that night he was fairer. 'What is promised is due', he says."

I remember that. It's him,  
isn't it? It's really William. The other prophecies, I'm not sure now,  
but this one. He is the one. For her.

I was born in Ireland, in  
1727.  
My name is Liam.  
I hated my father.  
I took what I wanted, and  
left it spoiled behind me.

I was reborn in Ireland,  
in 1753.  
My name is Angelus.  
I hated the world.  
I took what I wanted, and  
left it spoiled behind me.

I was cursed in Romania,  
in 1898.  
My name is Angel.  
I hated myself.  
I took what I wanted.  
And left it spoiled behind  
me.

My god. It's true. She was  
never for me. She was always for him. No wonder he stayed to claim her.

5.4.2 HOPE/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE

So I took the soul and left  
the chip. To give her what she deserved. But she looked at me with such  
horror, seeing Angel, seeing all the things I wish I hadn't done to her.  
Still flinching. Expecting messes. Fearing obligations. And William still  
a bad man, William who made Spike to be what he wasn't, a William-Not-Afraid.  
Couldn't and shouldn't help, and then not hardly helpful anyway. Still  
a demon. Still dead. Still too late, by 125 years give or take. But why  
did the demon, not to be trusted, still love her? Can't rest, can't stop,  
can't help, can't trust, can't live... what's left?

Still, for a moment, just  
one, I did hope to be a man. For her. To live and die protecting her and  
hers: check. To keep the promises to her I meant to keep: undone. To be  
allowed to care, because the caring part just happened somehow: not bloody  
likely. To take from her all her unbearable pain, that at least I would  
have liked to do, monster and man together, dying in her service. Call  
it poetic. Call it... justice.

5.4.3 HOPE/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY

I didn't want to love or  
be loved any more. It was a burden. It hurt too much. It cost too much.  
I wanted him to stay a demon. I thought I'd found an easy way to live.  
And became the demon in him. I was done fighting, but it wasn't done with  
me. And he wouldn't be done with me either. He wouldn't let go. He wouldn't  
give in. Not for himself, it was for me. No matter what I did to him. I  
lost my soul, and he, soulless, kept on poking away until he found it for  
me. I lost myself, and he's the only one who came looking.

But, the odd thing is, it  
doesn't hurt this time. It's more of a wonder. I see wonders every day,  
but few of them have ever been given to me. Gifts of the magi, one girl,  
badly damaged, one vampire, badly dented. I'm not returning him on Boxing  
Day. It's my present. I'm going to keep him.

5.5.1 HOPE/ ECHO/ WITNESS  
ARIAS

So, what's the deal with  
Buffy these days? Every year I stop by, there's another boyfriend. Which  
usually leads to a lot of trouble.

Planning to move in on this  
one too, Faith?

No. Call me cured. Buffy  
can have the lot of them, start a wax museum if it suits her.

Why did you come?

There it is, that nice welcome  
mat I've been expecting. What do you want to hear, the truth or what you  
think you know?

Truth or Consequences, you  
mean?

Lived the consequences, came  
to a grain of truth inside. You ready for that, Xander?

Lay it on us. Maybe we'll  
all surprise you. Been a while. Here in sunny Sunnydale, been a few trips  
to the heart of darkness, large helpings of pain and death, more than enough  
serious errors in judgment to go around. World save-age and real life,  
both a fearsomely messy business. Fact is, we've all grown up a bit ourselves.

Okay, I'll give it a shot.  
I came to help.

See now, that's just not  
working for me, because I can't help thinking 'but... mortal enemies",  
and it kinda ruins the mood.

Willow, I'm.... It's not  
that simple. B, her family, her friends, her lovers: at the time, it seemed  
to me like she had everything and I had nothing. Everything already had  
her name on it, and she wouldn't let me in, and I kind of hated her for  
all she had. For all she was, really, and I wasn't. But that wasn't all  
there was to it.

For you or for Buffy?

Being two Slayers together,  
we weren't really ever outside one another. We shared the Job, the dreams.  
We were One, so seductive, so intimate it still hurts. But that part also  
scared the shit out of me. I felt I could so easily lose myself forever.  
She who has the most toys wins, you know, way I figured it at the time.  
I couldn't make myself stop fighting her, and things just kept getting  
worse and worse. I know I can't ever make it right with her, or with all  
of you.

She tried to kill you. Seems  
to me an odd basis for a really big change of heart.

I did finally figure it out,  
all the things she tried to show me: how good it felt to actually help,  
how strong she really was that she never went dark, and even why so many  
people loved her. So we're not enemies any more, not on my side anyway.  
And in our dreams, you know, we could always still care about one another.  
When I was in there with her, I did know I could trust her, give her everything  
I had and she would keep it safe. This time, I just want to guard her back.  
Even though I can't imagine her trusting me to do it. She tried so hard  
to keep me from my own darkness. I owe her, large.

So, are you still connected?

I still need... I look into  
her to know what's right. She's a beacon.

So, we take you on, we let  
all the baggage go. Can you do that?

I want to. Can you forgive  
me?

Theme of the season. Pray  
for us sinners now and in the hour of our death.

That bad, huh?

Nah. It's just the usual.  
Notice, still standing. And so are you. So welcome home.

5.5.2 HOPE/ ECHO/ MEMORY

> True Thomas, he pulled aff  
> his cap,  
> And louted low down to his  
> knee  
> "All hail, thou mighty Queen  
> of Heaven!  
> For thy peer on earth I  
> never did see."
> 
> "Harp and carp, Thomas,"  
> she said,  
> "Harp and carp along wi'  
> me,  
> And if ye dare to kiss my  
> lips,  
> Sure of your bodie I will  
> be."
> 
> "Betide me weal, betide me  
> woe,  
> That weird shall never daunten  
> me;"  
> Syne he has kissed her rosy  
> lips,  
> All underneath the Eildon  
> Tree.
> 
> "Now, ye maun go wi me,"  
> she said.  
> "True Thomas, ye maun go  
> wi me,  
> And ye maun serve me seven  
> years,  
> Thro weal or woe, as may  
> chance to be."
> 
> She mounted on her milk-white  
> steed,  
> She's taen True Thomas up  
> behind,  
> And aye wheneer her bridle  
> rung,  
> The steed flew swifter than  
> the wind.
> 
> Syne they came to a garden  
> green,  
> And she pu'd an apple frae  
> the tree:  
> "Take this for thy wages,  
> True Thomas,  
> It will give the tongue  
> that can never lie."
> 
> "My tongue is mine ain",  
> True Thomas said;  
> "A gudely gift ye was gie  
> to me!  
> I neither dought to buy  
> nor sell,  
> At fair or tryst where I  
> may be.
> 
> "I dought neither speak to  
> prince or peer,  
> Nor ask of grace from fair  
> ladye:"  
> "Now hold thy peace," the  
> lady said,  
> "For as I say, so must it  
> be."
> 
> ("Thomas the Rhymer")

5.5.3 HOPE/ ECHO/ INVOCATION

Those who have killed, and  
those who suffer, beneath me, sound the bell slowly.  
The Slayer walks among you  
now alone, and knows your anguish.  
She is the One who slays  
but does not kill, who metes out justice but never vengeance.  
Today she carries neither  
stake nor sword, and her business is not with you.  
Unarmed, she is pure of  
heart, in the midst of slaughter.  
Show her the honor you owe  
her as she passes, for she has been Chosen a long time now, and has never  
been damned.

5.6.1 HOPE/ PLAINSONG/ BARD'S  
TALE

And the Slayer came to the  
keeper of the fifth gate.

"Let me through", she said.

"Where is your token?"

"I come unprepared. What would you have from me?"

"All of your hopes."

"Done."

And the gate opened, and the Slayer walked through empty-handed,  
her burden lighter.

And descended the stairs.

5.6.2 HOPE/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC

each small bare foot in  
turn tests the path before  
her  
in the cold dark she travels,  
blind, with  
time against her no clear  
trail to  
follow beyond longing and  
need her head held  
high she never  
once looks  
back

but up the double helix axis of the  
stairs behind her and across the  
barren landscape of each  
level in the narrow  
path of her  
footsteps

now are  
growing:

gardens in the  
forests of the  
night

5.6.3 HOPE/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD

there was so much blood that  
the walls were red  
and the child in the corner  
no longer cried  
and she drank her fill till  
the daylight dawned  
and even the dolls had dried

and the ship while they slept  
ran half aground  
and he dumped the bodies  
to catch the tide  
and they sang their songs  
and he staked her then  
and he held her till she  
died

it's a long trip out, it's  
a long way home  
and the Slayer waits on  
the other side  
it was just a game but she  
wanted more  
than eternity's blood red  
tide

Drusilla the Mad came into  
port  
on an empty ship with her  
perfect knight  
and her appetites, and her  
taste for pain  
and her purity of sight

but she chose Angelus to  
be her king  
and she wove her circle  
around him thrice  
and her Hunter rose to make  
her safe  
and moved beyond sacrifice

at the Hellmouth the Slayer  
was only a girl  
she was built to fail, she  
was born to use  
but the way they played,  
and the way he paid  
was a dance that they could  
not choose


	7. 6: dreams

6.1.1 DREAMS/ FORM/ WORD  


Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness  
sending  
know her now she comes descending  
know him waiting life unending  
dancing waters into mending  
bleeding into oceans tending  
sea from sky creation lending  
time and space beneath you  
bending

 _descend_ : to appear  
suddenly and often disconcertingly from above

 _thread_ : to pass (as  
a tape, line, or film) into or through something

6.1.2 DREAMS/ FORM/ WORLD

To live inside an archetype  
is to be dreamed. The Virgin Queen, the Huntress of the Chase, and Beauty  
Sleeping for a hundred years are caught inside interpolation, chaste and  
pedestaled, unjoined. Contained they cannot come into their power. The  
One tripartite goddess must unfold into all three aspects in order to create  
a balanced triad: Maiden, Matron, Crone. We know the Maiden, virgin Spring,  
so dear to Men, so innocent, her purity of focus will ensure a consecrated  
Autumn sacrifice. The Crone instead is gifted with all knowledge and the  
power it brings implies her mastery, but in that cold and wintry logic  
also waits the Goddess of All Battles with her genius for destruction.  
The aspect at the center is the Matron, she who offers both experience  
and ownership, the gardener of Summers. Mating into her fertility, she  
sings to those she loves protection. Universal Mother, she balances the  
known world at the center of her being, full of grace, and integrates the  
aspects into an organic whole at last. An end to all dichotomy, the three-in-one  
proclaims a shift from thesis and antithesis and into a becoming: synthesis.  
This is the realm of heart and mind and spirit joined. The excluded middle,  
note, is a logic problem. Three is a triumvirate. Unbeatable, unbreakable  
connections. In the language of mathematics, it creates a new dimension.  
In the language of magic, it makes a matrix. It sings of safety, trust,  
and love that will not end.

Instead each Slayer caught  
in time was Chosen, two, Slayer and girl, the Maiden and the Crone, Goddess  
of battle, mistress of slaughter, Queen of the Dead, their dead, her dead,  
both of her aspects dead because she lacks her third in power, betrayed  
by rites of circumcision. All of them lost, chained to the Well of the  
Slayer, taught that the Call of Blood made them unchaste, cast out, unclean,  
demonic, so that they bled a hundred thousand battles and they died and  
died and died in a barren world, in a red landscape of pain they did their  
duty. Cut off from love and hope, alive only in Slayer dreams of battlefields,  
disasters in their sights and in their narrow fated futures, they were  
martyrs to the cause of petty kings they dreamed only of dust and the end  
of time, the end of their time.

Demon lovers, not in their  
sights, until this Slayer managed two, against a world of opposition and  
her own much better judgment. She threw out the manual and set out instead  
to trust her heart, which promptly broke, she lost her maidenhead to gain  
nothing but pain and loss and death and damage, made it through the wedding  
only to turn to dust herself outside in light. The second time she fell  
into a dead man's arms she promised herself first she wouldn't bring her  
heart. Instead she dreamed of using all the trust he gave to stake him,  
out of time that shifted on them then, no time to have and hold, no time  
to choose for Chosen, and no soul in this year's demon made him real, except  
that he just loved her anyway, and felt sometimes like home.

6.1.3 DREAMS/ FORM/ MAKER

the Slayer navigates this  
labyrinth by holding string. string that is made of stuff more fundamental  
than space and time. it vibrates across our three dimensions, and time  
the fourth, and six dimensions past that in string theory rolled up too  
small to see, and the eleventh M dimension which is named for Mystery or  
Magic or for the Mother. and there it is, third aspect now moving towards  
him, called by that last unfolding, DNA mirror images that sing to one  
another a song of harmony that only stars and perhaps Drusilla could ever  
hear. harmonics that combine, descant descending, to make everything that  
is. symmetry that transforms into gravity and crocuses and moons and blood,  
nerve endings, radioactive atoms, and yet still remains itself, essence  
that meets existence and remains the same. the Slayer plays out string  
and dances life to making and remaking.

it's not a huntgame now,  
it's a hard world at its center but she plays into eternity a game of shelter.  
sheep in the fold. lambs to the slaughter? not on her watch. nurture is  
trumping nature. a break in symmetry produces patterns we can live inside.  
biological. cosmological. snowflakes and thought and galaxies. the goddess  
of battle becoming the maker of gardens. she is a predator herself, but  
she chooses always and forever to sing communion. and he falls before her,  
endlessly, he gives himself in love, to death, inside her, turning, full  
of wonder. he always sees her whole, however broken, and she can always  
find him there, to fall, open, inside her, into symmetry, a dream, a lesson,  
and a rhyme he kneels before her every time he breaks her heart.

6.2.1 DREAMS/ DIVINATION/  
PROPHECY  


red without and black within  
who has let this darkness  
in?

red witch white witch meet  
between  
making sending dreams unseen

what binds us in will bind  
us all  
cut the net we will not  
fall

white without and white within  
sympathetic magic, win

demon, Slayer, out of time  
meeting, mating, now in  
rhyme

world of shadow, world of  
pain  
neither one will come again

black without and red within  
one will lose and one will  
win

6.2.2 DREAMS/ DIVINATION/  
TARA  


two women are strolling down  
to the next gate.  
they look like two ordinary  
girls, out  
shopping the mall on a saturday  
night,  
talking about their family  
and friends.  
they both sound so casual,  
walking between the lines.  
except it's a battlefield,  
shadowplay monsters  
threaten to close in on  
them by the side of the  
road. banshees are wailing.  
plus they're both naked.  
just how much power did  
it take to bring them  
here tonight to walk this  
realm's forbidden path?  
but they don't broadcast  
mastery at all. they favour  
wisdom more. no hero's entrance  
here,  
they wear their gifts so  
lightly. it's not who they are.  
putting it plainly, one  
is alive, and one is dead,  
but they're both still standing.  
they're used to it.  
last time it was the other  
way around.  
long ago they learned the  
hard way they could  
trust each other. they keep  
moving forward.  
one's practically diaphanous,  
a ghost in the  
machine, the other's naked  
and bleeding, cut on the  
sharp stones of the road  
beneath her feet.  
it's clear they're not supposed  
to be here at all.  
forces allied against them,  
that sort of thing.  
but somehow they make it  
look like it's an  
ordinary night. they always  
know who they are.  
they move, but are not moved.  
last progress of the  
Slayer, in company with  
the White Witch,  
on the Via Dolorosa at the  
End of Days.  
in this world of phantoms,  
they still cast long shadows.  
they travel this last road  
freely and unchained.  
there is no light except  
the light they bring.

Is this just a dream?

Maybe the multiverse  
is dreaming you.

6.2.3 DREAMS/ DIVINATION/  
FATES

But we cut the cord. I don't  
know how many times... we kept cutting that cord. And there she is, still  
here.

Look, messing with time is  
my business. And, believe me, I changed her fate in every alternate. I  
get a kick out of messing with Osiris.

Then why. Is. She. Still.  
Here?

I can't get anywhere near  
those stairs, in any timespan. There's a wall of shades all around her,  
she's travelling with a spirit guide, she somehow brought the Key, she's  
making side deals with the Gatekeepers, and Osiris hasn't managed to beat  
her in the game. She wasn't supposed to have this kind of Power. They're  
stripping away everything she brought with her, and she's just getting  
stronger as she goes down.

So you're telling me there  
are cords that can't be cut?

We don't know what they're  
made of. Whatever holds her here, we've never seen its like before.

Suggestions?

Well, just on the offchance  
that you actually want my best advice, I'd say: bail. Personally and right  
away. When the White Room folded its tent and slunk away in the night and  
took your connection to the Senior Partners with it, right there was a  
sign to the wise. I'm going to ground myself, and I'm incorporeal. I wouldn't  
presume to lay odds against her now in any eventuality, not when I haven't  
the slightest notion about her power source. I mean, when I got a look  
at her earlier, it sure looked to me like she was just a girl.

6.3.1 DREAMS/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF EVIL

What do you still have left  
to lose, Angelus?

Darla. Come in. My name is  
Angel.

No. It really isn't. Judgment  
day is coming fast, you know. Are you ready to be judged?

Who is there left that can  
make that judgment?

You might be surprised. And  
that was entirely the wrong response, Angelus.

I kept him penned inside  
for a hundred years. I have earned the right to my own name, at least.

Is that the way you like  
to think of it? You know, the funny thing is, sometimes I even wish it  
was true. Must be one of those lingering aftereffects of having a soul.  
Sometimes it itches. Now give me an answer.

I can't make it all right.

Told you twice. Still, points  
for trying. And how are you doing with our boy?

Well.... He still wants to  
kill me. I guess that could be viewed as a plus.

Hmm, maybe. Alignment with  
good does look impressive on the report card. And have you seen to his  
education?

Between dodging stakes? Yeah,  
fighting with me is giving him plenty of useful sparring practice.

Raising children is a lot  
like landing in a nest of vipers, or so I've been given to understand.

It's my fault. I meant well,  
god help me. But I couldn't stop Holtz. And Connor's seen Angelus. I'll  
never get him back, I know that.

Then why are you still here?

Because she told me, once,  
to make amends.

My darling boy, always so  
full of good intentions. Don't you ever just want to rest?

6.3.2 DREAMS/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF BALANCE

I had a bad dream. About  
my mother.

Did you know I was there  
that night? In the alley? When you were born? It was pouring rain.

Wonder it wasn't raining  
fire. So, were they gloating?

What?

Gloating. About the evil  
thing they made together. Were they, Fred?

No. That's not... what happened.  
Didn't anyone ever tell you?

My father. Holtz. He told  
me plenty.

You're a smart boy, Connor,  
haven't you even got that much figured out yet? Holtz used you as a pawn  
to destroy your father. You want to start measuring up good and evil, start  
by measuring him up. You want to start measuring out damnation, don't start  
with Angel. Start with what you know. Start with Holtz.

Angelus is evil.

Angelus. Angel is not the  
same. Even Darla could have told you that.

She tried to. In the dream.  
I don't listen to demons. Wanna try to tell me my mother wasn't evil?

Your mother loved you.

Demons can't love.

Oh no? I understand Spike,  
the cause of all this commotion right now, is pretty good at it. Because  
if he wasn't, the Slayer wouldn't be travelling the land of the dead in  
order to retrieve him. And if Angel didn't love her too, we wouldn't all  
be standing here now guarding this meadow on her behalf.

Maybe love is Buffy's gift.  
But I bet she didn't offer it to my mother.

So, since you're so full  
of theories, why did your mother love you?

I don't believe she did.

She died so you could live,  
what would you call it?

I don't understand.

She told Angel to tell you.  
That you were the one good thing they ever did together. She made him promise  
to protect you from her. She took the stake and dusted, in the alley, and  
all that was left was you. She gave you the life she didn't have to give.  
I'll give you some advice, Connor, just this once. Make peace with your  
father. The world isn't black and white, and you're only hurting yourself  
by pretending it is. Your father tries very hard to protect this world  
that will not accept him, and he would do anything for those he loves.  
What did she say to you, in the dream?

She told me to choose to  
believe that there were things in life that mattered.

That's pretty good counsel.  
Maybe you should consider wishing her peace in return.

6.3.3 DREAMS/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF GOOD

It's okay. You're here. We've  
got you, Willow. What were you dreaming?

Prophecy. They came, oldtime  
prophets with robes and evangelical voices, reciting tales about the Slayer's  
role in Armageddon. Everyone was so impressed. Then Buffy came, in a big  
wind, but she was still just Buffy. And their tablets broke and they all  
just blew away.

6.4.1 DREAMS/ SOLILOQUY/  
ANGEL

I kill her family, her friends.  
I leave her messages inside each one, love notes delivered by the dead.  
I watch her at their funerals. She doesn't cry now, much. I'm getting tired  
of that black suit, I'll send another. She's losing weight again. I'm really  
quite concerned about her now, she seems so fragile, and I hate to see  
her still patrolling, while the boy guards her back, and why I never killed  
that boy back in the day, I must be getting old. Oh well, she keeps me  
young, that girl, one of my best inventions.

6.4.2 DREAMS/ SOLILOQUY/  
SPIKE

They torment me, I dream  
them, they dream me, all I have taken. I can't give them back what I took.  
I dream her, what I did, does she dream me, all I have taken? I can't give  
her back that trust I threw away.

I wish I could dream my family  
back, but I know they'll never come now. It's a mug's game, hoping for  
forgiveness. Could Joyce ever have forgiven me that? Can Dawn? I tried  
to keep them safe: she was always better than me at believing I could,  
and I didn't like to think of letting her down. Had enough worries without  
me adding more in. So why doesn't it feel any better now that both girls  
are safe from me?

Anyway, I had this idea I  
should keep on rerunning the numbers. Didn't come out the same every time,  
see? Sometimes Dawn died, so Buffy didn't have to jump, but that was no  
good. And sometimes Dawn never came, which meant that Buffy and Joyce didn't  
remember her, but still it didn't seem right to me to leave her out, even  
if I was the only one to know. There were a few permutations where Joyce  
didn't die, but they didn't help save the girls, and I knew Joyce would  
have told me off proper on that account. Couldn't leave the portal open,  
even if they all lived, because after that they none of them lived too  
long. So damn fragile, humans, a hard material to work with.

I didn't just try going back,  
I tried going forward too. Chip or no chip. Soul or no soul. When to get  
them, when to lose them. Keep the urn from breaking, or break it sooner.  
Keep Willow from going DarkEyedGirl. Keep Tara from dying. Buffy, now,  
would have frowned at some of my solutions, if I'd told her. Dunno how  
many times I killed those nasty little boys. Once I even vamped her, but  
it felt so wrong when I was doing it, I shut the simulation down and...  
well, cried. Tears didn't fix a thing. No surprise there.

The one that worked the best,  
I couldn't live with: in that one she jumped, and I wouldn't let Willow  
do the spell. See, I knew where she went, and it wasn't heaven because  
I could get there too. And I couldn't bear to see her like that, so small  
and so lost, restrained and broken, and I couldn't find a way to fix her  
even when I got her free.

Getting the soul earlier,  
no help. Easier to work without it, see? Easier to protect them too. Getting  
the chip out earlier, very bad idea. So there I was, stuck, no way to prevent  
Glory from coming, no way to take her out earlier, no way to keep her from  
getting her hands on Dawn. No way to take Doc out of the picture. Spent  
a long time trying to kill Ben earlier, but I couldn't seem to get at him.  
Build a better Bot, no. Send Bots and no Buffy, no. Send the Knights on  
a wild goose chase. Make Anya a vengeance demon earlier. Kill all the minions.  
No, and no, and no. One hundred and forty-seven nights in the interregnum,  
and I never found even one workable solution. Not as a monster. Not as  
a man.

I just wanted to spare her  
all the pain of that year she came back from the dead. I wanted her whole  
way more than I wanted... what I got. I wanted her to be happy no matter  
what it took. I wanted her to be free of me if that was best. So I tried  
going away, but I guess she needed something from me because she died again,  
over and over. Didn't make it out of her coffin, jumped again from the  
tower, danced too long for the demon. I tried not touching her, not giving  
in to whatever it was she wanted, and she died again. Getting the soul  
earlier seemed to set the Willow thing off somehow, and then they all died  
and I couldn't save any of them.

So there I was. Every night  
I saved her, lots of different ways. And Dawn died instead, or they all  
died, or the world ended, every solution worse from her point of view than  
the one before. I couldn't seem to make her not die, without the consequences  
killing her anyway. And I couldn't seem to let her die, and let them bring  
her back, and help her live again in some way that didn't hurt too much  
to watch. I guess in a way that must be how she felt all the time, condemned  
to watch so many bad things happen in the world that even she, with all  
her Slayer powers, just couldn't fix. Till she was paralyzed by the fact  
that she couldn't fix them all. Sometimes she couldn't even fix herself.

The hardest thing I ever  
had to do was not to change what happened in the bathroom that night between  
us. I don't even want to think about the way it always went afterwards,  
when the result was that I didn't go to get the soul. And I couldn't seem  
to get the soul any other way. So here I sit now, and Dawn's alive, and  
Buffy's alive, in the World Above, and I've done the best I can for them  
this time, and I should just let it go at that. But instead I dream of  
Glinda telling me to wait, she's going to come, and I know I never dreamed  
up that solution, sitting here in the dark, and I don't know what will  
happen if she does, and I wouldn't risk them for the world, that's why  
I picked this one. And I don't understand, why she couldn't just leave  
it alone.

6.4.3 DREAMS/ SOLILOQUY/  
BUFFY

My little sister has Power.  
Like the look she gets when she operates the canopener, that's how she  
opens stuff. Tin cans and doorkeepers just don't stand a chance. I swear  
all those pictures on the stairs used to be of closed doors. She'd like  
to do the same with me: good thing I'm the Slayer, or I'd be raw from all  
that Opening Up. Hard work keeping her out, but she's my sister, I carry  
her with me anyway, no matter where I go.

Today she travels with me  
even though she's also up above still helping to guard that meadow. Dawnie's  
the Key, effortlessly throwing open all the barriers between dimensions,  
chatting happily with Tara in this space while checking out Connor's cuteness  
quotient (and it's high). She keeps wanting to know how much farther it  
is till we get there. She's just a kid. She loves the vampire too; in a  
way, she's known him longer than I have. She always lets her heart show,  
so she's braver than me. Was I ever quite that annoying? One of my best  
presents ever.

I dreamed my sister long  
before she was made, in a dream where Faith and I made up her bed. Did  
we dream her into being that night together? Faith, my other dark little  
sister, giving me this Dawn. Slayer dreams. Two Chosen Twos. Faith is a  
riddle, I have kept all her power safe in me since on Graduation Day she  
gifted it to me, and soon it will be time to give it back. We still share  
Slayer dreams. Inside them she never turned dark, and we are free to be  
as uncomplicated as we will ever be with one another. It's an eerie thing,  
though, to walk past some of the doors inside herself she thinks are locked  
away, because nothing she is and feels can be hidden there from me. And  
some of those doors lead to places like this, places you could fall into  
and never climb out. Is this what it's like to be Dawn, I wonder? If so,  
she seems remarkably well adjusted. And how does Faith stay sane?

Does he know yet I mean to  
reel him in? I'm not throwing this one back. Faith and Willow don't quite  
get it: Faith because she doesn't know him, Willow because she does. It  
doesn't matter. Since they both learned to trust themselves, they've learned  
to trust me too. And Dawn and Tara know he's worth the rescue: they always  
saw him whole, they have gifts of their own.

I don't think I have ever  
felt so well connected. Linked in a neural network now to Willow, Faith,  
and Dawn above, linked here to Tara, linked to Spike down there below me  
still in the Well of the Worlds. Ties of love, of history and home. I am  
the Well of the Slayer, and they are all part of the source, still true,  
still felt, of all the power I own. I need them all intact to feel my way.  
To make me whole. I am not alone and they won't leave me. I won't leave  
them either. These are not pawns to sacrifice. It's not a game of war,  
it's a game of shelter. Theirs and mine. And I mean to win.

I used to fear Angel's dream  
of burning up in sunlight on my wedding day. For a long time it seemed  
like everything I wanted broke when I got it. I just stopped dreaming,  
stopped wanting. I just wanted everything to stop. No fairytale castles  
to keep me safe, no fairytale knights to plight their troth, or blight  
their oath, or whatever it is they do. But now I dream again of gardens,  
dream of home. They all of them make this home I am, and I don't mind the  
tending.

6.5.1 DREAMS/ ECHO/ WITNESS  
ARIAS

She dreams of death, of demons  
and disasters. Giles tries to kill her, the Master comes, her mother breaks  
a cup, and Angel promises to stay with her forever, and the demons build  
their fort, and the First Slayer tells her she is built for absolute destruction,  
and the girls go right on being slaughtered.

He also dreams: white goddesses,  
in poetry and song, eagles and serpents, playing out an Orpheus who lost  
Eurydice to light, Llew Llaw flying up to heaven, Daedalus in the labyrinth,  
Lucifer the fallen angel, Prometheus chained to a pillar.

She knows he's there, but  
he can only hope the dreams that Tara sent are true and she is coming.

6.5.2 DREAMS/ ECHO/ MEMORY

> Before my earliest memories  
> of the world, there were the dreams. There was the girl. She was different  
> every time. But the same. A peasant, a priestess.... Hundreds of girls,  
> from times we've forgotten, worlds we couldn't picture. She was me. She  
> wasn't me. I loved her. I killed her.
> 
> (Harth to Melaka Fray, "The  
> Worst of It", _Fray_ #5)

6.5.3 DREAMS/ ECHO/ INVOCATION

To those who inhabit the  
country of dreams, behold, the Slayer is with you.  
Grant her free passage,  
I beseech you.  
For she has dreamed, and  
been dreamed, and lived in dreams,  
and she knows all the truth of dreaming,  
and the power.  
And as you have dreamed  
her, so you also know her heart.

She has conquered all the  
darkness in herself, but she knows your pain.  
She has fought the dark  
in the upper worlds, and given peace to the damned.  
She has lost so much, she  
has little left to lose.  
Though she has lost so much,  
she continues to hold the center.  
Though she has lost so much,  
still she continues.  
In the dead ground, new  
life is kindled in her wake.

6.6.1 DREAMS/ PLAINSONG/  
BARD'S TALE

And the Slayer came to the  
keeper of the sixth gate.

"Let me through", she said.

"Where is your token?"

"I come unprepared. What would you have from me?"

"All of your dreams."

"Done."

And the gate opened, and the Slayer walked through empty-handed,  
her burden lighter.

And descended the stairs.

6.6.2 DREAMS/ PLAINSONG/  
LYRIC  


what binds us here  
what binds us all  
but chains

in a shadow world  
come out from under that  
red rock

when the lost are found  
when the found are spent  
you are more than shadow

we know your sins  
we know your heart  
you are more than this

we were meant to wait  
she was meant to die  
no longer

but we know you  
here we find you  
you are other

and we set you want you  
wish you will you  
free

the old world dies  
the new world comes  
red shift

his Slayer lives she gives  
forgives she comes  
Redeemer

Lucifer the  
star of morning  
fallen angel

becoming  
Lord of Light  
in a single night

out of nature  
into time  
and out of time

and into space  
and out of space  
and into her

to live inside her  
heartbeat caught in  
wonder

and so she comes to  
find him bind him  
wind herself  
in love around him  
where she travels  
death has no dominion

the old world dies  
the new world comes  
red rover come over

6.6.3 DREAMS/ PLAINSONG/  
BALLAD  


he dreamed her heartbeat,  
and he woke  
in everlasting dark  
he dreamed of sunlight,  
and he burned  
Angelus' lessons all unlearned  
kept nothing but the spark

the white witch kissed him  
on the lips  
the red witch kissed his  
brow  
he dreamed her warm, he  
dreamed her kind  
he dreamed of covenants  
that bind  
he dreamed what only he  
could find  
he dreamed she loved him  
now

he never marked her in his  
dreams  
he never wished her harm  
he wanted only what she  
chose  
to keep her safe, to heal  
her woes  
to wish her free from what  
she knows  
to give her joy, to fight  
her foes  
to keep her safe from him


	8. 7: duty

7.1.1 DUTY/ FORM/ WORD  


Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness  
sending  
know her now she comes descending  
know him waiting life unending  
dancing waters into mending  
bleeding into oceans tending  
sea from sky creation lending  
time and space beneath you  
bending  
earth and air forever blending

 _descend_ : to lower  
oneself in status or dignity

 _thread_ : a projecting  
helical rib (as in a fitting or on a pipe) by which parts can be screwed  
together

 _cord_ : the hangman's  
rope

7.1.2 DUTY/ FORM/ WORLD

This is not an age for heroes.  
Still, there they are, out in the meadow, fighting their natures to choose  
what might be worth living for, and dying for, in this sorry world. They  
battle the demons in themselves to stand in light and witness against the  
dark, just mortal, mostly, but never alone. Because this is the garden  
that the Slayer made them, her mother's notions of safety and home living  
inside her even in this first version of her world, her family, the source  
of all that strength she even gave away.

7.1.3 DUTY/ FORM/ MAKER

It's the end of the world,  
but the Slayer is thinking of gardens. In her bare feet she steps carefully  
over the puddles of blood, and in her mind replaces them all with crocuses.  
It is a kind of game she plays when the fields of death stretch out before  
her too far, too wide for the mind to hold. Her mother's seed catalogs  
continue to come to the house. She never has time to garden, but she likes  
to look at the pictures in them and dream a little. She wonders idly whether  
the vampire, who has had plenty of time after all to learn the world he  
unlives in, knows anything about the soil. She trusts with perfect confidence  
that he will never countenance a garden gnome.

7.2.1 DUTY/ DIVINATION/ PROPHECY  


Before the light, and before  
the darkness,  
before the day and before  
the night,  
before life and before death,  
before good and before evil,  
Eurynome the goddess of  
promiscuous creation  
rose and named herself on  
the  
face of the waters of birth.  
This was before the origin  
of  
galaxies, of time and space  
and  
other, and she danced her  
stations  
down the seas of chaos,  
where  
all things were one in her,  
and  
wonder tumbled endless in  
the  
languages of chaos theory  
from her neverending womb.

She dances yet alone outside  
dichotomy and dreams us  
into  
being for a moment and then  
dreams us back, Eurynome  
recumbent and resplendent  
in the  
glory of her mastery of  
all that will remain when  
the  
illusion of the walls of  
order  
shatter and return to dust,  
when one on one make one  
and reset  
balance inside one another.

So we will come to the end  
of prophecy, in the last days when the Slayer will choose to cast aside  
the mantel of the rule of order, and will no longer patrol the borders  
between light and darkness which will disappear in the time to come. She  
will choose to mate with darkness caught and held inside her light, and  
they will stand against the final dark together two in one. For time and  
space are one, as life and death are one, as light and darkness mate again  
outside the boundaries of the natural world, the Protector of that world  
and the Protector of Protectors meet in, mate in, love, and choose to   


hold another line altogether  
beyond their shared worlds  
but not between them  
(nothing above them  
nothing beneath them  
nothing between them)  
ever again  
beyond death and glory  
they walk where they please  
maintaining the balance  
in  
one another  
the borders they  
patrol they have  
already  
transcended  
the edges of  
infinity  
they have  
discarded  
laughing

lost  
found  
caught  
free  
all  
one  
infinity  
mere mathematics  
inside the double  
helix of  
creation

7.2.2 DUTY/ DIVINATION/ TARA

So, how are we doing? Is  
the line in the meadow still holding?

Yep. So far, so good. And  
they'll have plenty of stories of derring-do to tell you later.

Still gonna be a later, huh?

Oh ye of little faith.

Occupational hazard. Is he  
going to wait for me?

Always.

7.2.3 DUTY/ DIVINATION/ FATES

You've left it all too late,  
you have. And now you're all aflutter, and it won't do a bit of good. We're  
all learning the next set of lessons, and he's gone on before, my clever  
boy. Which one do you think you are today, then?

Drusilla, please, I need  
to know....

You need? But who are you  
to need, our father not in heaven? I also need, I who am bound to you by  
blood that you deny.

I am not Angelus.

Angelus knows I need to drink  
the children of this world, because he taught this duty to me. Do you say  
otherwise today? But I have seen your end and mine, my guardian angel,  
and it burns, and still it is more merciful than you have ever been to  
me. Come dance with me tonight, the plague halls wait, the stars will sing,  
and we will make up a better ending to this play.

Tell me the end you see.

I see it crimson, I see it  
red. I've read your entrails too, you know, and yours. They're both the  
same. Cronus swallowed his children too. No mask will hide you from yourself,  
not when you live in a hall of empty mirrors, not where we used to dance,  
unfather. Will you not dance? Which one do you choose to be today?

I'm sorry, Dru, I just can't  
let you go this time. I can't leave him this duty.

Your time and mine are done.  
The True King comes. True William I have sired, who has the gift of sight.  
He sees her clear in all her glory, and he does not burn.

Drusilla? Help me, please,  
there must be something I can do.

There's no help for you.  
What do you want to do, Angel, alone in the dark? Did you expect a picnic?  
Angelus built me once for just this moment out of time. You know the story.  
The old world dies. What will you give me? Peace? It isn't in you. Go and  
give what you have, protect the boy for once, your boy and mine, my darling  
boy who always knew how to love.

I can set you free at least.

Which one of you is free?  
What use is freedom to the damned? What mercy can you bring, which one  
is you, transfixed inside her light, forever cruel to be so kind?

7.3.1 DUTY/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF EVIL

Change or die. It's time  
to choose.

The Master always said you'd  
stand at his right hand, come the day of judgment, Angelus.

My name is Angel. And I am  
Master now. Do you deny me?

The Order of Aurelius has  
always stood steadfast against the light.

Have to say, you picked the  
wrong Slayer for that stance. Picked the wrong Champion, too. Picked the  
wrong mating. Guess that's the way it goes, when you choose to live in  
the dark. C'mon, admit it. You failed to stop the Council. They went beneath  
you and mined the stairwell. You need a cause? The Senior Partners are  
stirring. Want them to have the glory? As for all the rest of it, it's  
a done deal. Your plan worked. His seed is fertile. The Slayer's almost  
there. I know that girl and nothing in hell will stop her. We could use  
some help holding this meadow. There's a new world coming. Want to stick  
around and see how it can be made to work? Change or die. It's time to  
choose.

7.3.2 DUTY/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF BALANCE

Well, will you look at all  
of you? Getting way better at combat training, but every time you see me  
coming you get this sacrificial lamb thing going. Think I'm likely to kill  
you today?

Uh, only if we really deserved  
it?

Hmm. Thanks for the judgment  
call, at least. So, were you scared of Buffy, then?

Oh no. Well, except when  
she started in to make speeches.

So, is it good for a Slayer,  
you think, to get this fear vibe going?

Well, yeah, cause it's a  
tactic. Part of the weapons locker.

So, which one of us do you  
think is the better Slayer?

It's you, cause we can see  
you got more power.

So how come Buffy's The Slayer,  
then?

Just older, we figure, she  
came along first.

Which one of us would you  
want guarding your back?

Will you kill us if we tell  
you the truth?

Not today.

I'd rather have Buffy, because  
I trust her more.

So who's the better Slayer,  
then? Tell you a secret, I fought her lots, more than once to the death,  
and I never even came close to beating her. She had something I didn't.  
She knew what was right. You see all these heavy-duty people around, guarding  
her back, putting themselves on the line? They don't know what the hell  
she's doing, but they know it will be right. They're willing to die for  
it, they're just that sure of her. I don't have that kind of power. Maybe  
I never will.

What was it like, being called?

It was a rush. Really cool.  
All that power, license to kill. Where's the down? Except my Watcher got  
killed, and I bolted right across the continent to Sunnydale, trying to  
get lost. And then she tried to teach me what a Slayer really was. My better  
half. Slayer in Light, Slayer in Dark. The Chosen Two.

Did you share the Power?

No, just the dreams, we both  
got the power. But I thought of the gig as more of a lifestyle than a calling.  
I went for the power, no matter who had it. The bad guys had it. She beat  
them too, though, even when they had me on their side. And she kept on  
trying to show me a Slayer wasn't the same as a killer. Miss Goody two-Shoes,  
I figured. I was wrong. Girl's got more power in her little finger than  
all the Senior Partners combined. Takes a lot of power, you know, not to  
let it show. She'd always rather be just a girl, see, whereas me I felt  
like without being a Slayer I was nothing, really. You stick with her,  
see what you can learn. Let me play the Bad Apple. Deal?

Okay. Can we ask you some  
questions?

Sure, long as I can ask some  
too. First off, you guys have seen them both now. So dish. What's Spike  
got that Angel doesn't have?

Well, see, Mr Spike is a  
real scary guy. He could bite you at any moment.

Sometimes he does. Andrew  
got bit. That was a First deal, though.

He's more like you as a fighter  
than like Buffy or Angel. They're really masters, beautiful to watch. Spike's  
a street fighter, all out, not as strong as Angel but his endurance, wow,  
and he'd do absolutely anything to win, so you can't take your eyes off  
him for a moment.

Plus, you won't want to.  
He's really beautiful.

He'd do anything for her.  
That's why he went to get the soul.

So, lots of screwing going  
on, I take it?

Not even a little bit. She  
put her hand on his chest once, checking for broken ribs, and he touched  
it.

You're kidding me. That's  
the whole deal?

She goes out on dates with  
other people.

He sleeps on a cot in the  
basement.

Xander always wants to stake  
him.

She keeps the pig's blood  
in the fridge.

Man, if I live a hundred  
years, I'm never gonna figure that girl out. One girl in all her world  
with the strength and skill to keep them all guessing....

7.3.3 DUTY/ CHORUS/ FORCES  
OF GOOD

Do you ever get tired of  
holding the line, Xander? I mean, you're only human, shouldn't somebody  
stronger be holding it?

I like the weapons part,  
they make me feel all manly. And I quite like the saving the world parts.  
After they're done, at least.

But, I mean, if you think  
about it, where's the logic? Humans are puny, poorly trained, way too vulnerable.  
Weapons hardly begin to even those odds. Whereas we could be living. Amassing  
capital, and putting that to work. Soon we might buy a condo, pretty things,  
a lot of stock in something, and start having babies. Separately, of course.  
Doesn't that make more sense?

Are you trying to get me  
to rise to your bait, Anya? Or do you really not get it after all this  
time?

No, I get it, I think. See,  
I used to think it was just your Buffy fixation.

I don't have a Buffy fixation.

Yes, you do, whenever she  
calls, off you go, following behind her like a puppy. And, considering  
that you are not the Slayer, it's really quite foolish. You've never even  
trained to fight properly.

I kind of specialize. Newly  
fledged vamps in cemeteries, protecting Buffy's back while she fights,  
and rescue of innocents.

I know. One of your most  
endearing qualities. Brave. Big heart. But that's not what I started to  
say. See, I thought, love of Buffy. Illogical. Investment without return.  
All true, but not exactly right. See, when we were together, I humored  
you with Scooby stuff. Also I thought someone should be watching your back.  
Why is your mouth open?

I'm trying to decide what  
to object to first.

Well, close it. It's unseemly  
in a grown man. But now, here I am. Just like you. Holding back the night.  
Could be a big stadium number, if we got that demon back. So now instead  
of asking myself why on earth you're doing it, I'm having to ask myself  
why I'm doing it.

And what's your answer?

Because we're human, and  
it matters. Do you think we'll die tonight?

We might die any night, Anya.  
We might die crossing the street. That's part of being human too.

It's a messy business, being  
human, isn't it? All these unruly feelings. I'd really prefer not to care,  
because it really hurts.

Welcome to the world. I'm  
sorry I hurt you, Anya.

I know.

Do you really think I'm brave?  
I'm almost always terrified.

That's your secret weapon.  
Along with your heart. I got this really bad scrape off that one time,  
so I know.

You're pretty ferocious yourself,  
in battle.

I'm glad we're here.

7.4.1 DUTY/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL

She promised she would take  
me places, show me things.  
My sister opened the door,  
and she let me in.  
In one hundred and fifty  
years we were never bored.

I am an expert in the art  
of the kill.  
I am the architect of continents  
of pain.

I tried to stake her when  
Dru turned her back.  
I tried to save her once  
before she died.  
I tried to keep her here  
when Connor came.

She was the strongest one,  
because she knew  
All that we are, and we  
can never be.

~

I saw her once before she  
was ever called.  
I saw her burn in sunlight  
on her wedding day.  
I saw her die and could  
not give her breath.

I wanted just to give her  
something clean  
But there was nothing clean  
in me to give.

I drank from her and then  
I could not stop.  
I killed her friends. I  
meant to kill her too.  
I dreamed of how she tasted  
in the dark.

What she wanted from me,  
she could never have.  
It's not the monster in  
me that needs killing, it's the man.

~

I valued her, because she  
told me truth.  
I trusted her to kill me,  
when she must.  
I waited for her, but she  
never came.

I am the Master of the Aurelian  
Order.  
I am the Master of Los Angeles.  
I am the Master of Myself  
today.

I fight my battles on the  
side of Good.  
I have a family that I protect.  
I'm still a better monster  
than a man.

7.4.2 DUTY/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE

For one hundred and twenty  
years, my duty was to do right by Drusilla. Right, doesn't rate up there  
with saving the world, I know, but that's why I was turned, really, to  
do for Dru so Angelus and Darla didn't have to. So I chose to take it seriously,  
that duty, although it was their idea of a good joke at the time. For a  
long time that was all I was allowed to have for myself, the thing that  
made me useful enough to keep, that responsibility. And it wasn't a small  
job either. She was mad enough she forgot to do for herself, or couldn't  
remember how to do, all the little things: staying clean, eating, dressing  
herself, doing her hair. She'd get into a rage for no reason at all, and  
then she'd do such things, such terrible things, and she had no sense at  
all of self-preservation, so I'd try to keep her calm somehow, clean up  
all her messes, get her out of trouble.

Angelus would enjoy himself  
by pretending I was her maid of all work sometimes, but I was her fixer,  
really. I never minded. Dru was broken, but so innocent somehow at the  
bottom of that. I couldn't help wanting to do whatever I could to take  
away her pain. Such terrible things were done to her, and she did dreadful  
things in their wake, but somewhere inside she wanted to make things right,  
only her mind had such horrors around every turn, she tried to reenact  
them, I think, hoping to change the ending. She felt she was saving the  
children, wishing to save herself no doubt, but only made things worse,  
especially for herself when Angelus and Darla lost patience with her. Then  
they would teach her lessons, and me too of course, because it was my fault  
really, I had to learn to do better.

Left to myself, I valued  
a clean kill, but it didn't do to let any of them know that or they would  
have tried to teach me otherwise and I preferred not to learn. But this  
was not Dru's way, so I indulged her sometimes and where I could I tried  
to save her from herself. She didn't want to be saved, though, she had  
passed that stage long since, warned off by another in Angelus' series  
of long hard lessons, written on her body so deliberately by the Master  
of the house. And she had been schooled to love instruction, so that was  
another thing I could do nothing about.

So when the Slayer came back  
from the dead so broken, I thought I knew how to help, because I loved  
her. I didn't really understand, even after so many years, how thoroughly  
inhuman the demon's thinking really was. All the things I tried to do for  
her seemed monstrous to the girl, and even when they helped she was so  
horrified that they did, she thought herself a monster for responding.  
I couldn't understand the nature of her objections. And I frightened her,  
and failed her, and then, trying to fix things, almost destroyed her. And  
understood at last, in a moment, what she found to fear in the love I tried  
to give.

7.4.3 DUTY/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY

I should have done better  
by you, Faith. Now here's the last dream, sending: Slayer Power, from my  
heart to yours. It's my choice this time and I'm trusting you to make things  
right with the line. Yours to decide. It isn't power, it's strength inside  
that counts, and you've got plenty of that. You gave me all you had in  
dreams, after I tried to kill you, and now I'm sending it all back. We  
who are about to live salute you. One last kiss, Chosen Too. Welcome home.  
We always could be kinder to one another in dreams. But what I feel for  
you is real, little sister. Go make things nice for Dawnie till I'm back.

7.5.1 DUTY/ ECHO/ WITNESS  
ARIAS

She's gone. The ether trembles.  
The last seer on this whole plane is dust at last. That poor dead girl,  
she waited so long, a hundred years, for them both to come. She paid too  
much for that gift of prophecy she never chose.

7.5.2 DUTY/ ECHO/ MEMORY

> She left the web, she left the loom,  
> She made three paces thro' the room,  
> She saw the water-lily bloom,  
> She saw the helmet and the plume,  
> She look'd down to Camelot.  
> Out flew the web and floated wide;  
> The mirror crack'd from side to side;  
> 'The curse is come upon me,' cried  
> The Lady of Shalott.
> 
> And down the river's dim expanse -  
> Like some bold seer in a trance,  
> Seeing all his own mischance -  
> With a glassy countenance  
> Did she look to Camelot.  
> And at the closing of the day  
> She loosed the chain, and down she lay;  
> The broad stream bore her far away,  
> The Lady of Shalott.
> 
> (Alfred (Lord) Tennyson,  
> "The Lady of Shalott")

7.5.3 DUTY/ ECHO/ INVOCATION

In the last circle of darkness,  
the Slayer walks.  
In the name of the light  
you remember, let her pass through.  
In the midst of death, her  
gift is love.  
She has died twice, lost  
all she loved, given up her dreams of a normal life, and still she does  
her duty.  
Beyond death, beyond reason,  
she has been called, and she does her duty.  
She is the Bright One, she  
is not for you.  
Yet her light will shine  
on you as she passes.  
Lend her your blessing,  
and clear the path before her.

7.6.1 DUTY/ PLAINSONG/ BARD'S  
TALE

And the Slayer came to the  
keeper of the seventh gate.

"Let me through", she said.

"Where is your  
token?"

"I come unprepared. What would you have from me?"

"All of your  
duty."

"Done."

And the gate opened, and the girl walked through empty-handed,  
her burden lighter.

And descended the stairs.

7.6.2 DUTY/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC  


he dreamed of her last night  
she walked the  
ramparts of her keep  
again and when the walls  
fell at the last he saw  
her  
laughing as the  
fortress slid to  
dust beneath her  
arms spread wide and  
riding all her  
symbols of the  
rule of Order  
down to ground  
and free of all the  
weight of that at  
last

7.6.3 DUTY/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD

To whom is duty owed? the  
Chosen gives  
Her sacrificial self to  
the end of doom.  
For everywhere around her,  
evil lives.  
The Slayer's is the Hand  
that cuts the loom.

In the land of Men her duty  
is so clear  
And she is chained, a Champion  
left to die,  
A tribute for the dragon  
every year,  
A dead world to protect,  
another lie.

Instead one day she acts  
a different part  
And chooses to give life  
where death is owed,  
The demon calling her to  
seek her heart  
And own herself as all that  
is bestowed.

Stripped of her offices she  
is the same:  
Human forever, rich in family.  
Strong in her heart, she  
cannot lose the game.  
There are no rules she cannot  
oversee.

Through the last gate she  
steps, with every stride  
Dissolving prophecies predicting  
doom.  
No voices tell her gods  
are on her side.  
But she's the only player  
in the room.  



	9. x: resolution

x.1.1 RESOLUTION/ FORM/ WORD  


Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness  
sending  
know her now she comes descending  
know him waiting life unending  
dancing waters into mending  
bleeding into oceans tending  
sea from sky creation lending  
time and space beneath you  
bending  
earth and air forever blending  
dancing chaos order ending

 _descend_ : to pass by transmission, as for example old songs or ballads

 _thread_ : a streak of light or colour

 _cord_ : a moral, spiritual, or emotional bond

 _shanshu_ : to live and die as would a mortal man

x.1.2 RESOLUTION/ FORM/ WORLD

> The death of the mother goddess  
> [earth goddess] is the beginning of the antithesis between life and death,  
> and of other cycles of similar contrasts, like that of light and darkness,  
> of order and atrocity, etc.
> 
> (Masaharu Anesaki, _Mythology  
>  of All Races VIII: Japanese_)

x.1.3 RESOLUTION/ FORM/ MAKER

this is a meditation on the  
duty of dancing. when the Slayer dances at last, stars realign. and the  
planets shift. and the tides change. the old world dies. the old powers  
die. and there is an end to prophecy. so it came to pass, and this is the  
story of it, the how of the world changing, the why of the Slayer and the  
Slayer of Slayers, becoming, turning in the dance, engaging endlessly on  
and beyond this darkling plain till the world became what they needed it  
to be within the moment when they met and chose to join, beyond their natures,  
she in the Dark Universe light, and he in the Light Universe dark, opposite  
forces driven by need and longing into a synthesis that rewove the fabric  
of space and time to make possible their mutual becoming.

and so herein the old world  
dies, that world to which Buffy gave her seven year duty. that world of  
duality, dichotomy and stable populations, the World of the dead Above  
that matches the dead Below, ends when she follows her heart to him and  
beats Osiris in the game to claim at last her birthright and her prize.  
this was the old world of straight lines, sharp division and delineation,  
a side to stand on, a divided canvas. but neither the straight line nor  
the angles formed by its bisection appear in nature. Euclidean geometry  
sat in its own fantasy landscape and lied about the nature of the world.

so in that old world set  
of good and evil, the line was drawn in the center, in a no-man's-land  
of balancing forces that's metaphorical but occupied realspace within the  
physical world, Powers that Be, grey areas, a universe between the trenches:  
Willy's Bar on the borders of the night. on one side sat the world of the  
First where nothing grows, and the towers of Wolfram & Hart built on  
the power of dirty money, and the world of evil things that rule the dark.  
in the middle sat the Powers that Be, a host of minor gods and powers and  
players, some of them charged with restoring balance, some of them skittering  
back and forth looking for their own best advantage. on the other side,  
the side of good, White Hats and Champions, guardians of light. and the  
Slayer drew her line in the sand in the middle, claiming her territory  
beyond the boundaries of good, and patrolling her borders nightly, keeping  
the fragile Peace and weeding out the deadwood and the bad seeds. she held  
that balance by policing the badlands beyond the world we think we know,  
and kept eternal night from coming down on us all.

the black and white world  
of the buffyverse ended with the seventh episode, but the demi-world of  
grey that Buffy patrolled was still between light and dark. this put her  
forever on the opposite side of the line from her mirror image demon lover  
Spike, two opposed and opposing figures that belonged to different worlds  
that could not be blended, two unmeshable things, because she was a symbol  
of light and he was a symbol of darkness. but then they began to choose  
to patrol the same territory, walking side by side on either side of the  
line. and since every line has width, by definition, the moment came when  
they met inside outside and both occupied the same line at the same time,  
transcending the neutral space between them. and thereby they found themselves  
suddenly somewhere else, reengineering through theoretical physics a new  
relationship with one another. and that joint occupation in the center  
made a resultant vacuum on both sides of the line, and this remade in a  
moment the set and landscape, the world they lived in gone, negative space  
redrawn to set them free.

so at this point in time  
now Buffy dances out of duty at last to choose another path. her dance  
has remade the world, in chaos before order, where there are no boundaries  
and no firm dichotomies. Buffy, she always has herself as compass. and  
darkness turns inside her into light. so when she lays down the office  
of Slayer and comes as herself, she is reborn as a chaos figure, come to  
mate with another, and together they hold the balance inside one another  
instead of out there in the physical world. and in the new beginning that  
chaos sings, time and space are one, just like in mathematics, and physics  
remakes the black hole at her center into womb, to keep him safe, to make  
children, and they turn in the dance and hold another line altogether in  
the micro in the macro beyond space and time and the six string dimensions  
into the eleventh dimension of Mother and Magic and Mystery, and thereby  
the world becomes brandnew.

and in the new world she  
remains in light, and he will live inside her and not burn, and color returns  
to the world at last. neither one is grey, but they are no longer kept  
apart by their natures. they have both become chaos figures dancing together  
across a world they made which has no borders. because Eurynome has returned  
them back to the beginning, to a time before the Earth Goddess was murdered,  
chained to the Well, a time before all these dichotomies were set. the  
world, in short, is ending into beginning.

so now the balance shifts  
from a physical line in the sand to a united centre within Buffy and Spike,  
remaking as they will rise into an echo of their double-helix union with  
its central axis. they learn to master a new geometry of curved space.  
instead of standing outside one another in parallel lines, they can finally  
meet and mate. and instead of figures patrolling a line in the black night,  
we gain a world of light and color: a dance in which the principals circle  
the playing field, the stage, bleeding the colours through one another  
like ink mixed with a pin, until the two sides turn into a multitude divided  
by swirling spirals. this is a world of holding ground in concentric circles  
that Faith and the littleSlayers now inherit, a living world in which they  
all will play the game of sheepfolds and protection within a palette of  
proliferating color everywhere, shepherds who guard their flocks by night,  
by the light of stars, Inanna the Goddess of Heaven and the Lord of Light  
forever joined and wheeling across the sky. the perimeters they patrol  
and hold will now be measured as circumference instead of line, and the  
dark Slayer, and the Lord of Light, and BuffyBecoming, are all in this  
new world true chaos figures who stand against the long dark of the Last  
Ending to protect all that world of colour and choices that bleeds out  
of a world remade in light. Bright One, Dark One, sisters, lovers, here  
unjoined, but chosen, mending. because they have all learned at last the  
lesson, when they did the only thing they could in a deadly world in the  
dark, they learned to care for one another.

this is a meditation on the  
duty of dancing. when the Slayer dances at last, stars realign, and the  
planets shift, and the tides change. the old world dies, the old powers  
die, and there is an end to prophecy. they have no boundaries but the ones  
they choose. so it came to pass, and this is the story of it, the how of  
the world changing, the why of the Slayer and the Slayer of Slayers, becoming,  
turning in the dance, engaging endlessly on and beyond this darkling plain  
till the world became what they needed it to be within the moment when  
they met and chose to join, beyond their natures, she in the Dark Universe  
light, and he in the Light Universe dark, opposite forces driven by need  
and longing into a synthesis that rewove the fabric of space and time to  
make possible their mutual becoming. they recognize no borders when they  
walk their kingdoms. and light and dark are one, all else is mending, blending.

and they dance the round  
dance, sacred marriage, harvest out on the seed of the threshing floor.

x.2.1 RESOLUTION/ DIVINATION/ PROPHECY

> The vampire with a soul, once he fulfils his destiny, will shanshu.  
> ...  
> And if the beast shall find  
> thee, and touch thee, thou shall be wounded in thy soul, and thou shall  
> know madness, and the beast shall attack and cripple thee, and thou shalt  
> know neither friend or family. But thou shalt undo the beast... And thou  
> shalt be restored... Even as life and death are not two things but one.  
> In darkness is the light, in light is the darkness. Arise! Arise! Arise!  
> Arise! Arise! Arise!
> 
> (from The Prophecies of Aberjian,  
> AtS 1.22 _To Shanshu in L.A._ )

x.2.2 RESOLUTION/ DIVINATION/ TARA

Tara? Tara? Please. I lost  
the link. What's happening? There was a Calling, through Faith, for them  
all.

It's okay, really, it's only  
the Calling she severed. She is still here, playing Osiris. Willow?

I'm here. Tara, I can't do  
this without her. I'm not strong, like you. It won't be right, I'm wrong  
inside, I'll send, it will go badly. I need to know she's there to feel  
what's right to do.

Willow, she's trusting you.  
I trust you. We're both here, hold on. I need you to let go now and sing  
chant again. All the walls between dimensions are down, and the balance  
is shifting. There's nothing to keep her here now except all those connections  
to the world that both of you are holding onto. It won't be much longer.  
Tell Xander to get everything ready.

Don't go. Don't leave me,  
Tara. I get so lost in the dark.

You're more than that. Just  
be Willow and hold on tight. I'm always here. And Buffy's free. It will  
be all right.

x.2.3 RESOLUTION/ DIVINATION/ FATES

The Slayer rolls her own  
bones, beyond time, beyond life, and is not bound by the world, but stands  
outside it. And when she comes into her power at the end of days, she will  
know the world, just as she will know her heart.

So the Slayer that marries  
darkness to her light, bringing good out of evil, shall become more than  
Slayer, even the Light of the World.

x.3.1 RESOLUTION/ CHORUS/ FORCES 1

Ready?

Maybe. Not used to being  
general yet. Be sure to tell me how I'm doing, Wesley, maybe you'll get  
the hang of this Watcher thing the second time around. So far, I've got  
the Buffy litmus test down: I ask myself, what would Buffy do? Then I do  
the opposite. I'm kidding. If you could just see your face.

There's movement at the entrance.

Oh, goody: all this everlasting light in the meadow's good for extra crispy.

We come to stand with you and not against you.

Yeah, I hear pigs fly too.  
Well, on second thought, maybe they do at that, tonight. Okay, still, seem  
to recollect seeing your unforgettable gameface on the other side in the  
last skirmish.

The Balance is shifting.  
The Council of Watchers has chosen the Dark. But we await the coming of  
the True King. And you do the same. So we choose now to stand for light,  
with you, though preferably slightly out of it, as does the Master of the  
Order of Aurelius, he who is called Angelus.

We like to call him Angel  
here. So you know my Brother. How wicked cool is that? Okay, you're in:  
anyone climbs out of that stairwell, kill him. Twice if necessary. Especially  
if he's wearing tweed. I don't like tweed, did I mention? Coming of the  
True King, eh? That's Spike you're meaning there? Huh. I just can't get  
a handle on that guy, but nobody else came close to giving him that tag.  
We'll take the Senior Partners on; most of us here don't sizzle in the  
light. Try not to trample the wildflowers: Buff's getting a thing for gardens,  
and I want to keep things nice for when she comes back. Go nuts, or, you  
know, whatever. Gotta run.

Do you think all Slayers are mad?

Quite possibly. We never  
isolated a genetic strand, but the empirical evidence certainly suggests  
it. Girl's good at clear instructions, though.

She called him Brother.

Now that might have made for an interesting pair of Chosen. Well, too late now.

Hey, fledglings. Time to  
try out all those new Slayer powers, see how they work in action. Here's  
how it goes. Anyone entering the meadow that isn't us gets to die. Nobody  
gets to get away. Anything at the entrance there, bit more complicated.  
We have new allies, Angel's clan, and they're in charge of taking out anything  
coming up the stairwell. They'll stay out of the light. Don't dust the  
allies, it's bad manners. Anybody need a phone booth to change into costume?  
That's not the task I set you, Kennedy, what's your deal here?

Got my own plan.

Oh yeah? Let's have a chat.  
The battle's that way, and you're the best fighter of the lot. You listen  
to me, cause this is the only time I'll ever say it. Patience, never my  
strongest point. You may have all the others fooled, but I recognize you,  
cause you could be me. Hell, you have been me. Now, we're out of time to  
beat around that bush. It's not about the power or the glory, kid, and  
if you go for the power it's just gonna eat you alive, the way it swallowed  
me. I know that you don't get that: I didn't either, but I was luckier  
than you. You, you've just got me, and this is all I've got to give you:  
you're gonna take point for all these kids today, and you make one move  
towards changing sides and I'm gonna take you down in a permanent way one  
heartbeat later. I don't have any intention of letting these kids die because  
you're having a fit of pique over the way Buffy and me chose to divide  
up her Slayer powers. I still hold the line, and anytime you want some  
action off to the side you consider just how bad you want to go through  
me. You're playing way out of your league, and they don't call me a killer  
for nothing. Every kid on that line, little girl, is worth ten of you.  
Now get out in the field and make your choices, poser, cause I've got your  
back. Gives you a warm feeling, doesn't it, just knowing that? Get moving.

Man, you really know how  
to inspire your troops. If looks could kill.

She hasn't picked a side,  
Xander, and I can't think of anything more dangerous in a battle. Maybe  
fear will keep her from bolting if nothing else will. Keep an eye on her,  
would you? I'd hate to have to explain the whole thing to Willow afterwards,  
but I'm not risking all those brave little girls.

x.3.2 RESOLUTION/ CHORUS/ FORCES 2

How did you think this would end? I have to go down.

You're still not the Master of Us. Who appointed you Savior?

I'm the only one who can  
stay functional long enough to take out all the weaponry in the stairwell.  
This isn't a discussion. Is the crane ready yet? I'll use the cable.

I thought you hated him.

I sired him. He is my child,  
the same as you. I am responsible for him. Family ties. That's what it's  
like, to be a father. Also, I loved her. I will always love her.

So cool. I bet Angelus rages, though, inside, singing a different song.

I am Angelus.

No you're not. Couldn't you  
stay and love me instead, my eternally absent father? Easier not to, isn't it?

In my experience... maybe  
just a little. I leave you, though, this family I made. And they are better  
teachers than I'll ever be. I know, they made me better than I am. And  
I am blessed to have known you. Made you. Held you. Always. Go be a champion,  
Connor. Wesley? You'll keep those homefires burning on my behalf?

We need you here.

You don't. Not in this world  
to come. Take care.

You made us so much more.

Thank you. Your turn to run  
with it. It's time.

x.3.3 RESOLUTION/ CHORUS/ FORCES 3

What were you thinking, Giles?  
I'm supposed to be spelling Willow off on chant, not bandaging you up.  
I didn't live eleven hundred years to watch you die, thank you very much.  
Why are you always out there in the line of fire? You should put those  
frontal lobes to better use and stay well back.

Dear Anya. I'm glad to have  
known you. I was lucky enough to live to watch her grow beyond me. It's  
a lovely thing to see, but it's hard to let her go.

You stupid man, you're not dying on my watch. Look out there. What do you see?

A trampled meadow. The end of the old world.

Don't be foolish. It's the  
beginning of the new. I spent most of my life as a vengeance demon, you  
think I can't tell the difference? Three casualties in exchange for the  
death of all the opposition. We held that line. For Buffy. For Faith. For  
light. For the world to come. Next Buffy comes up the cable, and then we  
go home. I want you to go home with me. We're going to have a lot to do.  
I cornered the futures market while I sat with Willow, and there are several  
trust funds that need to be set up, one for their children, one for ours.

I think I'm having trouble following your train of thought.

That's okay. Lie back and  
think of England, or whatever it is you do. I was waiting for you to get  
to this on your own, but you took too long.

x.4.1 RESOLUTION/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL

I wondered if I'd see you, before I go.

Like you could actually avoid me.

Cordy.... Don't make it harder.

Harder? I'm gonna make it possible, mister. Cause where would you be without me?

Okay, you got me there. But you can't come. Don't even think it.

I think it, I do it. One good champion deserves another.

It's my choice.

It's mine too. You think  
I don't know what's gonna happen? You know you can't do it right without my help.

You're mortal.

You're immortal. That's the  
problem. You know it won't kill you. Didn't I promise you I'd stake you, come the day?

No rest for the wicked.

Yep, you've been wicked.  
Welcome to this world, Mr Preparing-to-leave-it. It's a wicked hard world.  
Let's just both wipe our ledgers clean. Maybe we'll see one another on  
the other side of whatever.

You still have gifts to give.

My visions came for you,  
remember, courtesy of those vanished Powers that Be? Our time is over,  
buddy. Get on with it. Remember, mortal here. I've got the stake. Think  
you can shield me long enough for me to use it?

I've never been able to stop you yet.

We get to save the world  
for light, so where's the downside? That's an armful of valley girl you  
got here, boy, not Galway crystal.

I won't let go. Thank you.

Hey, don't get all weepy on me now. I only ever wanted to help, you know.

Your best performance ever.

Timing. All in the timing. What are friends for?

Today I guess I know at last. Let's get it done.

x.4.2 RESOLUTION/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE

It doesn't really make any  
difference, does it? I am a monster and a man, as I have always been, and  
that includes before I was turned. Spike wasn't a demon who moved in and  
trashed an empty crypt, see? It was William made the demon. Everlasting  
life, unimaginable power, and no conscience. Of course he went for it.  
Nobody moved in on him, he changed as he chose. Easy way to live, revelation  
for the boy who hadn't seen much of anything, born to be a right Prufrock,  
and all of a sudden there's blood and glory forever. Spike was what William  
chose to make of himself, they are the same. It's William who's accountable.  
Who could blame Dru? And Angelus never made me, in spite of all the work  
he put into it.

So here I sit, monster and  
man, a demon who chose to get himself a soul, with no more chip these days,  
just waiting on a girl who used to be a Slayer until yesterday. I dunno  
what she is today, to get down here intact, but she's a wonder, I know  
that, in any incarnation. And since the demon always loved the Slayer and  
the girl, evil or not, chipped or not, ensouled or not, monster or man,  
I expect he'll still love whoever she is today.

What she wants him to be  
for her at any given moment, that's a mystery so far, unless she tells  
him flat out, but all that's just costume anyway, flesh and bone, blood  
and deadboy heart. There isn't any heart of darkness here, the monster  
never wished her harm, there's only me.

I don't know why it was that  
Angel reckoned it otherwise. Since Dru and Darla too, like me, were of  
a piece. Still I had reason to think I knew Angelus all too well, and he  
was ravenous, and never liked to share. I just don't think there was a  
Liam in there with him, he was entirely monster. Cursed with that soul,  
how did Angel ever manage to build himself from scratch on top of that  
hulky remnant of primordial evil, wrestle the old man into the wall and  
Montresor him into place for a hundred years, while Angel learned to love,  
and do good works? Nobody could have made that kind of deal with Angelus,  
and made it work. But why would Angelus ever choose to play that kind of  
part? I guess Angel really did want to make things right, poor sod, with  
the old man always looking over his shoulder, ridiculing his efforts, waiting  
for his one good day.

Pretty much all my sins have  
to do with what I ate, and did for Dru, and sins against various Slayers.  
Those things are down to me, and I can live with that, and still go on.  
But Angel had Angelus to live down and millennia would never have been  
enough to even that score. He would have liked to atone. But he didn't  
have a chance. Poor bastard. You want heroes? There, I'll give you one,  
our Champion, ladies and gentlemen, who fought a cesspool of darkness in  
himself and won for a hundred years.

My own aspirations are a  
bit less grand. I mean to do my best for the girl, whatever she needs,  
as long as I can. I'll guard her back, and fight by her side, and do whatever  
else she thinks she needs me for, and I won't ever leave her. I'd never  
let her be lost to darkness, never leave her in the dark, never let her  
family go bad or missing or fall into the dark, never let them fall to  
the darkness in me either. I'm not as worried about that last one as I  
maybe ought to be, because it's a very long time since I last set out to  
kill any of them, in spite of lots of provocation, and I'm still not sure  
I didn't really lay my weapons down before her on the day we met, her and  
her family and her friends, and me all evil standing before her full of  
myself for being a Slayer of Slayers, I still don't understand how it happened  
but somehow I fell out of darkness into her light, and even though it burned  
I couldn't bear to let her go. I wonder if that was the way it went for  
him too, lost in an instant inside her light and burning?

x.4.3 RESOLUTION/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY

Hero, what does that really  
mean? What use is glory, after all? How do we know at any given moment  
what the right thing is? What is worth fighting for? We're human, so we  
follow our hearts. And every time we do we are making choices.

How does a vampire ever learn  
to make good choices in this world? The demon calls him to feed, to kill,  
to a life of evil. Humans are so weak, and we only hate and fear those  
demons, try to kill them. How can they ever understand our pain? Why would  
they ever want to make it a little less? For all these people who can not  
accept them.

Still Angel loved me when  
he had a soul, and he cared about the people in this world, and tried to  
make it better. And there was nothing of the demon Angelus in any of that  
at all. And then Spike loved me, and tried to help, and to keep his promises,  
even without the soul. And how much courage did they show, heartless and  
damned, in all of that, compared to me, when all I ever really wanted was  
to help, and to give my heart?

x.5.1 RESOLUTION/ ECHO/ WITNESS ARIAS

Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived an ordinary life.

How very dull of her.

Ah, but she didn't think so at the time. She was quite fond of it, her little life.

And then what happened?

Suddenly, in a moment, the  
whole world changed. The world was full of monsters in the dark, and she  
was the only one with the strength and skill to fight.

Is it a saga then, Tales  
of Bold Penelope? Odysseus home with the suitors and the shroud unravelling?  
Another song of goddesses and sacred kings who wouldn't die and kept on  
trying to get home?

We can't know yet. The Fates  
are gone. We are as gods despised ourselves, caught in the narrative and  
lost in our own stories. And she still looks amazingly like a real girl.

Looks aren't everything.  
If it's a fairy tale, can we have the happy ending? Tuesday night at the  
end of the rainbow?

Read any fairy tales lately?  
How many monsters choose to change? The world is full of enchanted princes.

And hungry wolves deep in  
the forest.

But here the girl is really  
the huntsman. She's got the cape, but the basket's full of weapons.

And the monster fell to her  
anyway long ago.

There's another version.  
Once upon a time, the world was different. And the Slayer fought chained  
to the red rock. She sang her siren song to every demon who came too close,  
and bled her hundred thousand battles alive but caught in the moment of  
death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound, and was destruction, absolute,  
alone.

But that was in another country,  
and besides that wench is dead. Bleached bones and shadowplays out in a  
desert at the dawn of time, the end of space, where nothing grew. In the  
land of death. And how is it these days, out in the worlds we know?

A little kinder.

x.5.2 RESOLUTION/ ECHO/ MEMORY

he was a different  
person then, and so was i
    
    
      
        i was warm                    i didn't               in the end  
     and i was loved               come here             we all are  
    and i was finished              to atone             who we are  
    
    
    
    

to those who lose their battles  
in the dark  
we will remember you

x.5.3 RESOLUTION/ ECHO/ INVOCATION  


Behold the Guardian of you all is walking.  
She comes now in her passage to the bottom of the World.  
She is the Bright One, she who has no darkness in her.  
And she has shattered all the weapons.  
She has shattered all the walls.  
She has shattered all the fear she finds.  
And shattered all the ties of blood that bind you here.  
And she has shattered hope of death and of dominion.  
She has shattered dreams so you can dream anew.  
And shattered every duty so that you may rest.  
She has brought you resolution at the end of days.  
You will all know her by the light she brings.  
Look back. Behold behind her all the old world changes.  
She is making for you gardens in the night.  
She is the bright one, every  
song she sings is made of making.  
She gives away the strength she has and is.  
She breaks the bounds of earth and now she sets you free.  


x.6.1 RESOLUTION/ PLAINSONG/ BARD'S TALE

She found herself in the  
room with the senet board, and the god Osiris.

"Now you are no longer the  
Slayer", he said to her, "just one small girl who does not matter. No weapons,  
no friends, no hope. Our bargain is off."

"My bad, I thought it was come  
as you are, when I came. But now I can see you clearly, the snake in the  
garden. And as you say I am just a girl, and so beneath you. But I'm still  
me, and I always keep my bargains," she said. "And I can't help but notice  
the gameboard is still set up, and the move is mine."

"Move, then, and  
bet all you are alone on the throw. Throw the sticks and cross the Styx  
if you can, but you're not under my protection, and you'll never find him."

"You can see I'm all naked and mortal here, your keepers have taken their  
pound of whatever, and all I have left is myself. But still, I'm thinking  
it's more than enough for the likes of you. I'm wondering, though: what's  
left of gods when they run out of worshippers?"

Alone in the room she threw  
the Styx, and gave the ferryman the penny that Willow gave her, to his  
disappointment, and he carried her across and, this time at least, she  
did not drown.

x.6.2 RESOLUTION/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC

what the heart forgets in time, the body remembers.  
no matter what the soul denies, the body remembers.  
what the mind cannot bear to hold, the body remembers.

on some molecular level, we do all get to be immortal.

x.6.3 RESOLUTION/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD

  
  
Down at the bottom of the World Below  
In the World Below, for the World Above  
There's a dead man  
waiting  
in fire for snow  
in fire for snow  
  


  
Up on the surface of the World Above  
In the World Above, for the World Below  
There's a Red Witch  
singing  
against the dark  
against her dark  
  


  
Down at the bottom of the World Below  
In the World Below, for the World Above  
There's a girl  
ascending  
There's a girl  
descending  
There's a girl  
ascending  
not far to go  
not far to go  
  


  
Up on the surface of the World Above  
In the World Above, for the World Below  
There's a Slayer  
becoming  
a force for light  
against her night  
  


  
Down at the bottom of the World Below  
In the World Below, for the World Above  
There's a White Witch  
coming  
to help them know  
to help them grow  
  


  
Up on the surface of the World Above  
In the World Above, for the World Below  
There's a carpenter  
making  
a link to home  
a link to home  
  


  
  
Down at the bottom of the World Below  
In the World Below, for the World Above  
There's a vampire  
dusting  
prepared to go  
prepared to know  
  


  
Up on the surface of the World Above  
In the World Above, for the World Below  
There's a boy  
now crying  
who learned to love  
who learned to love  
  


  
  
Down at the bottom of the World Below  
In the World Below, for the World Above  
There's a girl  
now dying  
alone too slow  
she's prepared to go  
  


  
Up on the surface of the World Above  
In the World Above, for the World Below  
There's a Watcher  
watching  
his children grow  
his children go  
  


  
Down at the bottom of the World Below and  
Up on the surface of the World Above  
In the World Below, in the World Above  
There's a green Key  
opening  
one door to go  
one door to go  
  


  
Down at the bottom of the World Below  
In the World Below, for the World Above  
There's a dead man  
rising  
with seed to sow  
with seed to sow  
  
  
  



	10. x + y: resolution

x+y.1.1 RETRIEVAL/ FORM/  
WORD  


Eurynome the neverending  
know me in the darkness  
sending  
know her now she comes descending  
know him waiting life unending  
dancing waters into mending  
bleeding into oceans tending  
sea from sky creation lending  
time and space beneath you  
bending  
earth and air forever blending  
dancing chaos order ending  
three in one alive ascending

 _descant_ :  
a melody or counterpoint  
sung above the plainsong of the tenor;  
the art of composing or  
improvising contrapuntal part music;  
also the music so composed  
or improvised;  
a superimposed counterpoint  
to a simple melody;  
discourse or comment on  
a theme.

 _thread_ : a slender  
stream, as of water

 _cord_ : an anatomical  
structure (as a nerve or the umbilical cord) resembling a cord

x+y.1.2 RETRIEVAL/ FORM/  
WORLD

So Inanna sits at the end  
of time, in the stars that govern tides and crops and seasons measured  
out now seven thousand years and waits, for the sidereal year, the gap  
between, eternal rite of harvest. Then when the living world, the world  
alive, dreams doubled four-point stars, morning and evening, symbols of  
the male and female principles, Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, rises  
up naked from chaos at the beginning/ending of the world and prays them  
into being, dividing seas from sky, so that she might not dance alone.  
Consort, other half, the sum of the astronomers, he nestles in behind the  
Queen of Earth and Heaven, immortally becoming. And they turn cartwheels  
in the sky, one small blond girl, one Lord of Light, One in the measure  
joined, remade repaid redeemed, at peace and blissful now that time is  
done again. They find and count their blessings in the worlds beneath their  
feet, risen in power, reborn, rebuilt, redreamed, a legend and a lesson  
and a rhyme.

The Hunter and the Hunted,  
joined in battle, danced another dance and sung a World to being in their  
wake. They shed their skin and floated backwards into one another, trust  
that trumped their nature, safety in each other from the night, the mating  
of light and darkness, the rule of order, the rule of death, become the  
universe before it was tamed, true chaos rising, Gemini rising into glory,  
Eurynome still waiting, gone before to the core of the world they made  
and mastered.

They rose inside outside  
and claimed dominion over Earth and Sky and Fire and Water, claimed by  
the rites of _Hieros Gamos_ , the sacred marriage reenacted on the threshing  
floor, seed spilling into gardens, seeding the cosmos, strewn from their  
passage whirling through an empty sky.

x+y.1.3 RETRIEVAL/ FORM/  
MAKER  


memory has a  
shape. it leaves  
bones in the air,  
transparent. it  
sings time. she  
balancing on the  
axis of her  
pre-Adamic  
double  
helix with his  
matching  
DNA in  
ribbons  
wrapped around her,  
spooning her safe,  
protected by the  
map of his body,  
sleeping in dreams they  
share, revolving  
slowly in the  
empty sky.  
to love.  
to wake.  
to give.  
to live.  
inside.  
still.  
turning.

x+y.2.1 RETRIEVAL/ DIVINATION/  
PROPHECY

> 'And there will be a time  
> of crisis, of worlds hanging in the balance. And in this time shall come  
> the anointed, the Master's great warrior. And the Slayer will not know  
> him, will not stop him, and he will lead her into hell.' As it is written,  
> so shall it be.
> 
> 'Five will die, and from  
> their ashes the anointed shall rise. The Brethren of Aurelius shall greet  
> him and usher him to his immortal destiny.' As it is written, so shall  
> it be.
> 
> (The Master reading Aurelian  
> prophecy, BtVS 1.05)

This is the family of Josef  
Nest, long Master of the Order of Aurelius. He who killed the Slayer once,  
who rose again and turned his bones to dust. So one did die. So must it  
be.

Then Darla fell to her own  
child Angelus, and rose human, and was turned again by their child Drusilla,  
and then chose to turn to dust to save a child. So two did die. So must  
it be.

William was called to serve,  
but chose to serve instead the Slayer, and died on her behalf to protect  
the Key, and waits in darkness now but still compelled by light. So three  
did die. So must it be.

Angelus' child Drusilla fell  
according to the mercy of Angelus, he who damned her, claimed her, granted  
her last wish, and sent her to her rest. So four did die. So must it be.

Angelus, the last Master  
of the Order, and the City of Los Angeles, and Master of himself, then  
chose to die to save the two below, the Slayer rising now with William  
from the earth. So five did die. So must it be.

'And there will be a time  
of crisis, of worlds hanging in the balance. And in this time shall come  
the anointed, the Master's great warrior. And the Slayer will not know  
him, will not stop him, and he will lead her into hell.' As it is written,  
so shall it be.

The Slayer and the lesser  
god, Prometheus, Orpheo, Lucifer the fallen star of the morning, danced  
the dark dance together but were changed within, and fell together, according  
to their natures, into prophecy and out of time. They claimed each other  
in a harvest rite that changed the world we know, and so she followed him  
into darkness but remained in light. And he turned inside her changed and  
was not burned by light, the one who waits, the one we waited for, the  
Master of the Hunt, the sacred marriage, unbarren union of the Slayer DNA  
with that of the one True King.

And from the ashes of the  
five the Anointed will arise, the Master of the New World, and we choose  
to stand here, Dark Lords of the Order of Aurelius, allied with the forces  
of the light we wait to greet him and fulfill the prophecies for which  
we waited now time out of mind for him to come, the one who mates, the  
Slayer called by Slayer finally to dance that long dance on the bones of  
the Master's family and take his place as Master of the World Above, a  
Lord of Light.

'Five will die, and from  
their ashes the anointed shall rise. The Brethren of Aurelius shall greet  
him and usher him to his immortal destiny.' So here we stand for him, to  
celebrate their Sacred Union at this place of power, above the Well of  
the Slayer, her womb, the Mother of the World to Come, in grace we come  
to greet her, know her, bringing the gifts that waited for this day, the  
sacred chalice, given to both in recognition that they are the Anointed,  
the Chosen, and the prophecy is fulfilled, and the cup passes from us finally  
and grants us rest. Arise! Arise! Arise! Arise! Arise! Arise! In light  
they shall be all we know of heaven, at last the miracle we see, the Order  
ending as we praise them, and we burn. As it is written, so shall it now  
be.

x+y.2.2 RETRIEVAL/ DIVINATION/  
TARA

Time for me to go.

Oh no you don't, no rest  
for you. You promised me you'd show me gardens.

You can't miss them, they're  
everywhere, all the way up.

I need you to tell me all  
the names of the flowers. Will you help me plant a garden in the world  
above?

The bargain was for One.

Not true. Willow only unmade  
the First Bargain. Dawn opened the doors herself. I bartered with the Gatekeepers,  
I won the Game, and I paid the Ferryman. Not bad for naked, huh? I'm never  
telling where I had to hide the coin. And Xander's holding the ticket for  
our passage up, three places, paid in advance. See? I'm almost old enough  
to be getting wise.

I think you are. So you won't  
owe anything?

I played to take what I needed.  
I needed him, which you of course knew way before me. And I need you, because  
I always get into such a terrible muddle without you.

When I first met you, I thought  
you were unkind.

Oh, that was Faith. The two  
of you will just have to work that out. Truth of the matter is, it's deeply  
symbolic. Three in one need to rise up through the Axis of the Worlds.  
And you're our third in this triune, Spike's Glinda and my friend. I even  
know why it's three. In our very own new version of the life after life,  
you are the catalyst, the guardian, the go-between, the Keeper of the Matrix,  
Our Lady of Peace, the Mistress of Connections. You're the glue, so time  
to get all sticky.

I suppose you'll be needing  
pancakes, and buffalo wings, from time to time.

Spike likes them hot. Dawn  
likes the heart-shaped ones. She's waiting not so very patiently. There's  
no help for it. You have to meet your terrible destiny, just like I did,  
and that's biology, the study of how to live.

x+y.2.3 RETRIEVAL/ DIVINATION/  
FATES

Everyone ready? One, two,  
three. Now. Going. Up:  


change inside history  
in love  
my charge, my daughter

we see eternity  
in all  
we taught her

poesy, memory  
flow out  
like sand, like water

injury, augury  
that never  
caught her

the gift of ecstasy  
the rhymer  
brought her

transcendent unity  
they bring  
we've got her

warm and loved and  
finished and now  
home

x+y.3.1 RETRIEVAL/ CHORUS/  
FORCES 1

Wesley. What do you want?

It's late. Time to go.

Too late for me. I know,  
I made my choices.

The whole world's changed.

You fancy me in a white hat  
now?

No. Lots of colour in this  
world, Lilah. Come and see.

Why?

I'd just like to see how  
you look standing beside me in the light.

x+y.3.2 RETRIEVAL/ CHORUS/  
FORCES 2

Lydia? Giles. Yes, very well,  
thank you. We have lost allies to the fight, but we still control the meadow,  
and they're drawing them up the cable as we speak. Have Charles and Lorne  
proved useful? I'm glad. Their talents did seem a good match to your requirements.  
No, everyone caught in the stairwell, on both sides, died there. Thank  
you for the warning; things might have gone quite differently if we hadn't  
known. There was a bit of a skirmish, topside, and as far as we know none  
of those who chose to stand against us lived to tell the tale. And our  
intelligence is tolerably reliable. Do you need reinforcements? Because  
I think perhaps we could spare them now, at least until the final battle.  
I agree, it's paramount to protect that library for the sake of future  
generations. When Buffy and Spike get some rest, we'll all put our heads  
together with Faith and Wesley and the girls and decide what's best to  
do about all the new Slayers. Especially since our tentative understanding  
is that this Calling will prove to be the last. We could use some of the  
Council's considerable resources there, both financial and academic. But  
I think we can safely assume that the Council will never be granted any  
authority over the girls. Essentially, though, Lydia, you are the Council  
now, and we believe we can trust you to make the best possible disposition  
of those resources that remain to you. What is your situation personally?  
Do you wish to be relieved? That's a dangerous position you're in there;  
you might be safer here. No, I quite understand, we must all do our duty  
as we see it in the world to come. And in that I want to personally wish  
you well. You have shown much fortitude in choosing your own path at the  
critical moment. Yes, we'll all look forward to meeting at last for tea  
after the war is over.

x+y.3.3 RETRIEVAL/ CHORUS/  
FORCES 3

They rise in harness out  
of time, in space transcending, three going up the axis of the spiral stairs  
that two came down. One small blond girl, still holding on, one vampire  
curled around her nesting, one guardian angel to embrace them both and  
keep them safe, triumvirate, triad. The helix axis runs through the base  
pairs. Two pure posthuman genomes, designed and built to die, to kill,  
to mate, to join, to make a new world on the ashes of the old, the Chosen  
hold the balance now and they hold the stairs, protected always by the  
strength inside, pure Summers, and the strength that those who love her  
lend her, always and forever, for the light. And every level they rise  
past stretches out to infinity blooming, gardens as far as the eye can  
see, all different, endlessly proliferating from the bloody footsteps of  
the Slayer in the labyrinths of the land of death, come gathering, the  
Queen of Earth and Heaven and the Underworld, Buffy Inanna once Sumerian  
is learning the names of all the flowers at last, and there are no longer  
any shades to see. Up they rise, past duty and dreams, past hope and blood  
and fear, where Angel and Angelus and Cordelia died, past walls and weapons  
and the Well of the Slayer where the Aurelians wait, back to the meadow  
where they come to greet her, family and love she took with her on her  
last journey and refused to ever give up.

x+y.4.1 RETRIEVAL/ SOLILOQUY/  
ANGEL

three things  
in this world  
i have loved:  
a good broadsword,  
a good end,  
and a girl in sunlight.

x+y.4.2 RETRIEVAL/ SOLILOQUY/  
SPIKE

I'll just step back and play  
the damsel rescued, shall I, doe-eyed, dewy, yeah, I can bring that off,  
don't want to steal her moment, she's the hero after all and I can't be  
the dragon any more, unless she wants me to, of course. I'll have you know  
it takes two beautiful women to rescue the likes of me. This is the meadow  
where Willow did the spell that brought her back the first time. Come forward,  
blessed one. Know your calling. Heart of the fawn. I couldn't have done  
that to her. Still, here now and whole and shining bright as ever. Hand  
in mine, that's new. Hand of the Slayer. Not the Slayer. Slayer emeritus.  
Won't be letting go at this end, not in this immortal lifetime. And the  
boy came through, kept the ticket, even laid on blankets, I could get to  
like that boy, and there needs to be a carpenter. Tara and Willow floating,  
got that look of wonder, I may have it too. Well, it's a day of magic,  
isn't it? Bit's got a hug these days that's more of a tackle. Summers women,  
none of them ever did do helpless. The Watcher's looking fragile, lost  
her one too many times now, I expect. A lot of people I don't know, Angel's  
crew maybe. Who's the madonna? And that one must be Faith, the Queen of  
Fire and Water, another little whirling dervish, I see she loves my girl,  
and she didn't lose too many little ones in battle, guess she'll do. This  
is all Buffy's family. She brought me home. There'll be blood waiting in  
the fridge, and where do I sleep this time, now that she brings her heart?  
That hand's still caught in mine, and all my home forever lives inside  
her eyes. The Bright One, is she not for me? She gives me all of this today,  
a duty and a gift, a meadow full of family to care for and protect in the  
name of love, till the end of the world, even if that should happen to  
be today.

x+y.4.3 RETRIEVAL/ SOLILOQUY/  
BUFFY

Flowers and presents, best  
birthday ever, and it isn't even. Can there be chocolate too? I can't wait  
to see Willow's face when we come through. Yep, there it is. No tears allowed,  
you both did good. Go make each other happy now we're home. I've got you,  
lost boy: don't look back, and don't let go. Hope someone thought to bring  
a blanket. Bonus points for two. Well, Xander did, imagine that. Giles  
looks so tired. Where's Dawn? She smells of home. Triangulating odds to  
find location, need to tell Tara that, so much new stuff to know. Boy,  
Wes has changed. So that's the kid. The meadow's not quite trampled:  
seven days in the job, and the girl's already a better general than me.  
My family. Something to eat and a do not disturb sign, even if Armageddon  
comes today. We have a different ceremony to enact, and it's only meant  
for two, and it lasts forever.

x+y.5.1 RETRIEVAL/ ECHO/  
WITNESS ARIAS

> Just as the truth about the  
> future would be attained only if man were in touch with a knowledge wider  
> than his own, so the truth about the past could be preserved only on a  
> like condition. Its human repositories, the poets, had (like the seers)  
> their technical resources, their professional training; but vision of the  
> past, like insight into the future, remained a mysterious faculty, only  
> partially under its owner's control, and dependent in the last resort on  
> divine grace. By that grace poet and seer alike enjoyed a knowledge denied  
> to other men. In Homer the two professions are quite distinct; but we have  
> good reason to believe that they had once been united, and the analogy  
> between them was still felt. The gift, then, of the Muses, or one of their  
> gifts, is the power of true speech.
> 
> (E R Dodds, _The Greeks and  
>  the Irrational_)

x+y.5.2 RETRIEVAL/ ECHO/  
MEMORY

How many days?

One hundred and forty-seven.

You came down the stairs.

Yep. The doors are open.

Plan to stay?

Taking the elevator back  
up.

How are things up there?

There's a parade. Seventy-six  
bloody trombones.

How does it go this time  
round?

We're gonna save the world.  
Wanna come?

x+y.5.3 RETRIEVAL/ ECHO/  
INVOCATION  


To all who dwell in the worlds  
beneath the world, remember.  
This Slayer who travels  
on your sacred ground is the Protector, and not the Avenger.  
Lend her your grace.  
In the midst of death, her  
gift is always life.  
Creation follows in her  
path.  
She has come to the bottom  
of the world alone and  
undefended in search of  
treasure she  
already holds in her heart.  
Lend her the warmth you  
have, grant her dominion.  
Though she has descended  
alone, let her pass  
upward now and out intact,  
protecting all she needs  
to bring.  
For she has died twice already,  
and given all she had,  
and there is no rest for  
her yet, because  
in this world above she  
is still sorely  
needed, and much loved.

x+y.6.1 RETRIEVAL/ PLAINSONG/  
BARD'S TALE

And there on the other side  
she followed her heart, and found it, right where she left it, on the other  
side of the crypt door.

"So, I read this thing somewhere, and always wanted  
a chance to say it," she said, "And here's where I get to: I come to you  
as I have always come, with empty hands."

"Not true", he answered, blue  
eyes widening, "because this time at last I can see your heart".

And she,  
and he, together went up, and out, and never looked back.

To the end of  
the line where Xander stood faithful and brave with the ticket he kept  
stamped paid, and then to the blanketing embrace of all the family she  
made and held on to, against all odds, in her sunlit world.

To prepare  
all together for a final battle, and afterwards to live unencumbered in  
a world made safe at last by the choices they all made.

x+y.6.2 RETRIEVAL/ PLAINSONG/  
LYRIC  


he  
moving in  
spirals  
out of  
darkness

she  
moving in  
spirals  
bearing  
light

two  
become  
one  
Chosen into  
sunlight still

unchained

x+y.6.3 RETRIEVAL/ PLAINSONG/  
BALLAD

seven years down and a short  
trip back  
was the length of the Slayer's  
reign  
and in that time she died  
but twice  
but she came right back  
again

two vampires fell into her  
light  
and the first was cursed  
with a soul  
when she gave her maidenhead  
to him  
she could not keep him whole

so the first she loved she  
sent to hell  
but he didn't come back  
the same  
and he left her high, and  
he left her dry  
though forever was his game

there was no way back, there  
was no way in  
and she slammed shut every  
door  
she had left her heart in  
the land of death  
and she couldn't feel anymore

then the second one lacked  
any soul at all  
but he loved her anyway  
and he helped her back from  
the land of death  
where she would have liked  
to stay

and he tried to keep his  
promises  
but no matter how hard he  
tried  
the demon rose and it struck  
her down  
for it would not be denied

when he got the soul, it  
was done for her  
and he lived with all that  
pain  
still trying to help protect  
her world  
without any hope of gain

when he died to keep her  
sister safe  
he wanted to set her free  
but she would not leave  
him there alone  
in pain and agony.

the Slayer went down to the  
underworld  
and she played the game  
of Life  
for the second one never  
was dead at all  
in his heart or the afterlife

and she left behind everything  
she loved  
just to ransom back his  
soul  
and she brought her heart  
that she kept so dark  
for she needed him to be  
whole

it was dark dark night but  
she made it bright  
and she waded through blood  
to the knee  
and she changed the world,  
and empowered the girl  
and she set them both quite  
free

when she slew the dragons  
and won the game  
she brought him her heart  
to hold  
then she drew him out of  
the outer dark  
and she gathered him into  
the fold

Inanna went down to the underworld  
and she played the god of  
night  
she won back all that she  
needed there  
and restored the world to  
light

while behind her in her footsteps  
bloomed  
the power of the human heart  
the blood that covered the  
battlefield  
had become her garden of  
art

and she left behind the world  
she knew  
but returned to a world  
remade  
with her heart restored,  
and her duty done  
and a universe yet to save

when she held the world in  
her hands that night  
its balance had been restored  
since she gave her office  
and lent her grace  
and she helped him at the  
ford

so time and space were the  
same at last  
and they danced between  
the lines  
and he sowed his seed and  
she ceased to bleed  
where the gifted chalice  
shines

they danced upon the waters  
of birth  
at the edge of all that's  
known  
and she followed her heart  
right back to the start  
no longer made of stone

come forward, blessed one,  
at last  
this offering we give  
of all that has been stripped  
away  
to make a demon live

maker: jill robinson

macha@teaattheford.net  
macha@ntl.sympatico.ca

1st draft, early version:  
31 Oct 2002  
2nd and 3rd draft, early  
version: Nov 2002  
4th draft, early version:  
Dec 2002  
1st draft, 1st half of final  
version: Jan 2003  
1st draft, 2nd half of final  
version: Jan-Mar 2003


End file.
